It's been a long time since I had news, so here's an informational update! I've added a control+click feature to insert a terrain without erasing the rest of the cell contents. Also, I'm working on dialogs to edit the properties of individual tiles. Here's a preview:
I hope to be able to release a program update with these features in the next couple weeks, so stay tuned.

Well, I never would have thought I'd ever be making this post, but here it is...I have made the difficult decision to begin the process of shutting down my website.
Over the last few years I had already begun to explain my diminished presence in the CC world as due to real life, and there were moments here and there where I did manage to carve out time for certain projects (level set page changes, playing through CC2/CCLP1, designing a few new levels). But they were few and far between, and I was always just assuming that "down the road" things would slow down and I would get into a routine where I could make "real life" and "CC life" coexist.
But here we are, a few years later, and I find myself with a full-time job, a wife, a house to take care of, changing interests and priorities, and it is just seeming less and less likely that I can make that happen. Even when I do find myself with some CC time, I feel oddly divided. On the one hand, I feel like it is never enough - I get a chunk of time to solve two CCLP4 levels and wish I had more time to better optimize my scores or to continue playing. On the other hand, after playing I see household chores piling up that I should have been taking care of, and feel guilty that I even took the time that I did to play CC. Either way I look at it results in an unsatisfying feeling.
I'm not at all saying it's not fun anymore - it is - and this is not a goodbye post. However, I might be less active than before and will not be able to keep on maintaining my site any longer.
I am open to a bankruptcy buyout if anyone would like to keep certain aspects of my site going, especially:
- the Tile World 2 homepage
- the Chip's Challenge Creator homepage
- the level set pages
and if someone really desires:
- the AVI archives
- MikeL2/3/4 scoreboards
- the page with the latest 64-bit CC options
- my listings of links
Whoever would like to take over hosting any of these pages, I will send them (and the database) to you to officially become "yours". (For Chip's Controls I plan on re-uploading the latest version here with all the HTML pages included.)
Hope everyone is doing well - thanks for reading, and now back to your regularly scheduled Chipping.
Mike Lask

Download
Hello Chipsters!
I am currently working on making a TASing emulator for CC! With this emulator hope to emulate Chips challenge accurately and provide many useful features for routing and even casual playing.
Features
Rewinding
Savestates
Frame-by-frame playing
TWS Playback
Continue recording from playback
Easy solution sharing
View the monster list, slip list, button connections and chip's move history as you play
Record gifs
Cheats
And much, much more to come!
Issues
Sliding blocks leaving traps onto sliding tiles cause slide delay when they shouldn't
TWS files may end a move early
TWS files with clicks may not play back correctly
Some unknown issues
Currently, 588/596 official levels play correctly. See all known issues.
Github repository
Feel free to request any features in this thread or by messaging markus#1180 on discord.

Level 91
"Pipe Maze"
The atmosphere and name of this level is meant to evoke an underground pipe maze from the Super Mario Bros. series, and I'm quite pleased with how it turns out. There are a few places where you have to push a block and not follow it, but I always allow the player to look ahead and see that. The hint is meant to remind you that there's a water tile at the end of the slide leading out of the southmost section; I probably could have worded it better.
I didn't notice until much later that you can't actually see the water at (10, 9) before you step into that slide, but I'm sure 99% of players pushed the block ahead anyway. At least if I had to accidentally leave an unforeseeable deathtrap in a level, I put it right near the beginning!
Level 92
"Square Dancing"
(CCLP1 Level 18!)
I was getting close to the end of the set. I needed another level. I didn't have many blob levels. And so I constructed this level in approximately 2 minutes. At least for a blob level, it's not really stressful or frustrating, so I think it's fine for CCLP1. I wouldn't be surprised if this level had the shortest design time out of all CCLP1 levels.
The name is a reference to Blobdance from CC1.
Level 93
"Progress Ball"
The name is a pun on "progress bar", which I later found out was also a custom level title. As this is a late level in the set, it includes a bit more trickiness than usual, such as the fact that you have to enter the glider/fireball room through a recessed wall the first time and through the force floors the second time, as well as the fact that stepping on the button at (30, 26) will get you stuck unless the ball is in the proper position. Of course, these details are probably still pretty easy to figure out for experienced players. Another one I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, and though it might've had a chance at CCLP1.
You can pretty easily run through the big line of tanks in the southwest without using the blocks to block any of them off. Didn't feel like changing it since it's not really an important part of the level.
I added the force floor at (19, 1) in an update. My reasoning for that was that if someone had astronomically unlucky timing, they could step on the (30, 26) toggle button while the ball was on the (18, 1) toggle wall and get it stuck on the left of that wall. But oh wait, if that wall's closed, then the ones next to the button are open, so no cook. Silly unnecessary fix (just realized that now)
Level 94
"Bridges for Bugs"
You know what the set really lacked, I thought? A long block-pushing level. Why did I think that? No idea, especially when Level 86 is already kind of the same thing. But as far as block-pushing levels go, at least this one is somewhat interesting since you're building paths for a bug and not just for Chip. It could also have been a lot worse; note that I limited it to about 1/3 of the map.
This level introduces reuses (from Level 30) a mechanism I call "double cloning". Note that the clone button doesn't directly clone a bug; instead, it clones a ball which clones a bug and promptly dies. This way, the ball acts as the bug's controller boss and forces it to exit the clone machine to the north in MS, no matter what any previously cloned bug might be doing.
Level 95
"Chomping Swarm"
Remember Jumping Swarm and Slimy Swarm? This is like those, but with Teeth. I made a version of this in Levelset 1 that didn't quite work because if Chip was too far left, the Teeth wouldn't enter the force slide. I fixed that issue by designing it so that the entire playing field is several spaces right of the cloner, except for the path from the socket to the exit since the Teeth cloner is moot at that point. Also, the use of traps instead of walls to help keep back the swarm is kind of neat, I suppose. Using traps this way is a coincidentally similar concept to "The Grass is Greener on the Other Side", a Josh Lee level in CCLP1.
Level 96
"Chip Away"
The title is a pun I was surprised never got into an official set. The concept is based on the part of "Oh-Ho!" from CCLP3 where you have to clear some dirt and make a ball's bounce cycle longer, letting you sneak in behind it. In this case, you have to "chip away" at the dirt, locked doors, or chips to increase the bounce cycles and get the rewards at the ends. I think the level had some neat ideas, such as the multiple uses for the ball at (1, 22), but the core concept dragged at times. The chip line right before the chip socket didn't need to be that long.
The hint is meant to get you past a couple of tricky decisions with your keys. You have to unlock the blue door at (3, 17) before the one at (13, 13), and at the end of the level, you have to unlock the yellow door at (17, 2) (which you can reach earlier, though it's farther from the yellow key) before the one at (6, 2), though in that case you can clearly see which choice is correct. I'm not sure the hint wording is quite as clear as it could have been.
This level saw a couple of updates. First, I added force floors between the toggle walls in the bug line because I was having trouble with the bugs getting turned around in Lynx. Second, I changed the ball at (14, 18) into a fireball and added a water tile at (7, 17) so you could drown it and not get surprised by it when you're coming back through the (20, 17) force floor.
Level 97
"Guardians"
In Levelset 1, I made an extremely generic dodging level called "Guardians" that just consisted of concentric squares of monster paths, separated by full-tile walls, with chips in between the paths. Something like this:
Well, I wanted to make it more interesting this time, so I compressed the old "Guardians", so there was no longer safe space between the paths, and put it in the middle, with four unique dodging challenges around the outside. I decided to have the monsters in those four areas be released when you grab the keys because that reminded me of the trope in various other video games or movies where a character grabs treasure in an ancient temple or something, and some monsters/spirits/golems come to life and start chasing him or her....
The first three dodging rooms look trickier than they are; in each of them, there's a spot in the middle where you can stand and the monsters won't get to you before you have a clear path to the exit (in the walkers' case, this is usually true). The Teeth room surprised me by being harder than I expected, but it's still doable.
Depending on how you unlock the locks in the middle, you can make a swastika, but if you do that, you have no one to blame but yourself!
Level 98
"Rube Goldberg"
Whoo, boy. This is one of the hardest--if not the hardest--levels in the set. Tricky because you need to think ahead and keep track of what parity toggle walls and tanks will be in as things happen....
It includes a couple of concepts inspired by CCLP3. First of all, the level idea as a whole, where you need to set up an elaborate path for a monster to go through while Chip is stuck in a trap, is totally inspired by You Can't Teach an Old Frog New Tricks. Also, the key section in the west was inspired by Vulcan. Of course, a massive difference between this level and Old Frog is that in Old Frog, you have to make a lot of decisions that could cook the level before you can see the whole thing. In this level, I let the player see nearly all of it, enough that they can make the correct decisions without guesswork. For example, I even let you walk through the fireball/trap mechanism in the east yourself so you can see what will happen to the glider there. In an update, I added chips and chip sockets to the level, forcing you to explore the northeast before you start unlocking doors in the west. This way, you can see what positions the toggle walls and tanks are in, and therefore know how many times to hit each button. As a bit of trickiness, the only solution for the key section (as far as I know) involves making the glider pass over 1 green button...and 3 blue buttons.
One annoying thing about the level is that once you clone a glider and hop into the trap, you have to wait quite a while to see if it releases you or not. To alleviate this, I tried to add some sound cues to the level that would play as the glider went through. The string of balls exploding bombs in the northwest is unmistakable to the ear when it happens. Also, in the same update where I added the chips, I added a toggle wall in front of the fireball cloner so it would shut off (and shut up) a short while after it had done its thing.
Level 99
"I Wanna Be the Bit Buster"
This level takes everything the set is about--friendly, intuitive, fair design--and throws it all out the window for one level of sheer evil fun on the part of the designer. It's only fitting for a level named after I Wanna Be the Guy, a game infamous for its extreme difficulty and traps that are unfair, creative, and made to do the opposite of everything the player expects. This was incredibly amusing to design, and apparently some players thought the traps were amusing to fall for, too, since a few people gave the level positive reviews. (And some gave it negative reviews, as I expected.) Just how many traps are there in this level? I'll count them below. Please don't look in there until you've tried the level for yourself!
The hint for this level says "EASY" in all caps because, well, I figured some people might not like this level, so "EASY" is the password for the next level!
Level 100
"Boss Battle"
Even though this is the last level, I designed it pretty early...around 12th or 15th. It was supposed to be the midway point of Tiles 200 back when that was a thing, but I figured it also served fine as a finale for this set. The password is EASY because I think this level really is easy--much easier than #99 and miles easier than the previous action level (Water Slide). Fine by me; I generally dislike boss battles in video games, so the easier, the better.
This is based on danmaku (bullet dodging) games. Since Chip can't really kill things in this game (other than by directing them into water or bombs), the "story" is that you're trying to infiltrate and sabotage a spaceship, so you have to dodge a barrage from its guns (which are shooting monsters at you) and press buttons to turn them off, then go inside, dodge the crew members, and bridge to the exit (simultaneously clogging its engine coolant tank and dooming it to overheat and break down). I intentionally made the patterns of the balls and the tanks pretty easy to discern and dodge. The fireballs are a bit trickier, as they're cloned randomly by blobs. The inside should be relatively simple.
I'm slightly disappointed because when I built this level in Tiles 200, the spaceship actually looked vaguely spaceship-shaped. But that version was lost to the bit bucket along with the rest of that set. Try as I might, I couldn't pull off the same look here. At least the gameplay turned out the same.
Conclusion
What do I think of this levelset as a whole? I was quite pleased with the levels in terms of how fun they are to play, and I was especially happy to see the generally positive feedback from most of you who played the set! I'm also incredibly proud of getting 26 levels from this set into CCLP1 (and possibly some into CCLP4). One thing that I think of as a shortcoming of the set is that most of the levels are very easy to medium in terms of difficulty, and the difficulty curve is pretty flat until the last 15 or so. It's possible that, as the designer, the levels seem easier to me than they do to others. Still, there aren't any I would consider a challenge on the level of CCLP3 Level 100 or onward. (I've learned to appreciate difficult levels like the ones in late CCLP3 after playing them, though I didn't much like them initially.) Part of the reason for this is that I find it hard to design levels that are extremely difficult while also making them fair (giving the player all the information they need to solve them). I would try my hand at making a few more difficult levels in the sequel set, The Other 100 Tiles. I also think I tended to "play it safe" with the design in this set, not really toying with the player's expectations very much (level 99 nonwithstanding). Again, I would aim to change that a bit in To100T.
Thank you to everyone who viewed my commentary! I hope it was at least a little interesting and taught you things you might not have known about my thinking and level design processes. I'll be starting the Developer's Commentary for To100T soon. Have a happy holiday season, everyone!

Quite frankly, I wonder. Last night I had a crazy dream about Chip's Challenge. This isn't the first time it happens. I once dreamed that J.B. phoned me to ask me to help his wife get the role of Melinda in a film adaptation of CCLP1. I originally got the ideas for several of my levels (Two Sets of Items, Flying Saucer, Container Ship in a Cyclone, etc.) in dreams. But this time, it is even more nonsensical.
I was checking CCZone, like I do almost every day. There was Markus' post about CCLP1 in the blogs section, but there was also a new post in my blog. That was strange, I didn't remember posting anything. I checked out the post and saw that it was an early draft of a post I had wanted to make for a long time. It was divided in six groups of three paragraphs each. The first paragraph of each group was about CC. The second paragraph of each group was a deep question and I asked that the readers post their answers in the comment sections. The third paragraphs were in spoiler tags. They were supposed to contain pictures from another forum, along with captions, but only the captions were there, and they made no sense without the pictures.
I then check the comments section. There is only one comment, made by a member who doesn't exist in real life. His username starts with the letter r and he has no avatar. He answered all six questions. I give him a reputation point.
I go back to the main page, and see that there are 11 members in the chat room. I then see that two members are following the blogs section, and I decide to follow that section too. After refreshing the page, I see that there are 49 members in the chat room. I put my mouse pointer over the link to the chat room without clicking, and this opens the chat room. Then, I see that there are two types of visitors in the chat room: registered members who are allowed to post, and unregistered guests who are not allowed to post. There are 49 registered members and a large number of unregistered guests (five digits).
Nobody reacts at my arrival. I post this picture by accident and I don't know how. I didn't post a link to the picture, but the picture itself. Then, another member, probably random 8, posts a cat selfie. However, the cat in the picture looks a lot like my cat. I don't have a cat in real life but in this dream I do. I am horrified at the fact that a picture of my cat is available on the Internet and briefly consider deleting my Youtube channel and all my levelsets.
Luckily, I soon realize that it's not my cat, because of the computer in the background, an old laptop running Windows XP. There are two open windows: a maximized browser window showing a forum (it's not CCZone), and a Chip's Challenge (MSCC) window that cannot be seen entirely. random 8 writes in the caption that the set being played is DwanT1.dat.
Then, several other members post various websites. They don't post links to websites, but the websites themselves. Josh posts a magazine advertisement from the early 1900s. I try to copy all three pages of chat messages to a text document on my computer, but then I wake up.
While this dream does not make a lot of sense, it made me discover one thing: I wish CCZone was more active. What do you think?

I'm still letting that sink in. 500 is such a small, unassuming number as a number. It's a fairly short period of time in seconds, being just over 8 minutes. You can't do very much in 8 minutes.
You can do a lot in 8 minutes (complete all but 5 or 6 official CC levels). It's an incredibly long time to have to make 0 mistakes during (Warehouse II, Cityblock). And when taken one item at a time, 500 is a veritable mountain. I'm not done optimizing, nor am I done with any of these scores (ok maaaaaybe done with CCLP1), but this is a good point to take a hiatus. These past dozen bolds have all taken a lot out of me and I definitely need the break to work on other pursuits, so for now I will just reflect on what it took to get here. (as well as the Chip Cup from the past 2 years, since I need to average 7th to lose this year... heheh) 500. Wow.
February of last year, I scored 700 on Cake Walk to take 10th place in the original set and claim the Bit Buster award. I had 403 bolds at the time. Trying to go chronologically from here would be confusing, since I don't remember a lot of the specifics, but I do remember Ruben gained 1 second each on Teleblock, Lemmings and Jailer to reach 5,977,030 points and knock me out of the top 10 (November 30th). Naturally I refused to let this stand and went to improve my 413 Blobnet. That same day I spent a couple hours playing the level, at first copying Miika's 422 safe route directly and later using judgment to skip waits (but still no risks). This resulted in a quick 427, settling me firmly in 7th for the time being. But then I realized I could take a couple risks early on, cut a few corners and before long reached 431, meeting my goal of 430+ for the level. I am still yet to improve Block Buster or Cake Walk, but I'm much more confident in my ability to get a solid score now. The new goal is to pass Andrew Bennett on all sets: this seems doable with significant effort, but it feels like it can't be a bigger mountain than 500 bolds from 0 in this span of time.
CCLP2 I'd gone through and picked off the easy bolds while playing through for the first time. This left me with some fairly significant execution challenges to overcome, and I made the mistake of sorting these into the same classifications I gave CC1 levels: Definite, Probable, Unlikely and HAHAHANO. Funny aside about HAHAHANO- originally CC1 had 4 levels in this category, being Blobnet, Blobdance, Cityblock and Doublemaze (I could see Block N Roll being something that happens at some point as 433 takes very little reacting). Now there are three, as I not only found 549 on Cityblock, but found and scored 550, beating pieguy!!! I'm not convinced my route is optimal, but I'm in the CC1 MS evolution page now anyway and nothing can take that from me (of the 500 bolds I have this is one of the ones I'm most happy with, and if you want to match it...well, don't be afraid to break the patterns.)
Anyway back to CCLP2. The Definite pile was fairly small and easily scored. The Probable pile had a couple naive placements, like Jungle (seriously me?) and Island Hopping (only took about a half hour or so, wasn't too bad). Working through these didn't take too long to reach around 120 bolds, at which point I hit a wall. Oorto Geld II was a pain and I had to score it twice as the first time I missed the -.9 and got a -.0 instead. Iron Mysticus and Key Color also both proved much more challenging than I expected (Key Color in particular with a 1/10000 string of bad luck with the blob cloner blocking me the first time 10 times in a row...), but as usual persistence in attempting and practicing specific sections helped significantly. Wrongly pegging difficulties of levels continued as Icy Moat fell quickly (I expected to struggle with the timing, but it was close to 49 Cell which I already knew) but Madd Maze was a full day grind, with an abyssal RFF room success rate (my route through has an extra input compared to the AVI or TWS routes, but this extra input helped me as it meant I had a consistent input rhythm), and then the blobs kept directing the gliders wrong >_<.
Eventually I worked through all the easy levels, and so progress slowed significantly at 480ish total (I'd been working on other sets during the CCLP2 focus, but not as much). Pauseless Captured and first try traps Gauntlet helped, as well as saving a bunch of long sokoban routes for all in a row. After Cityblock, I moved to CCLP3, scoring two new records (Countdown with Hornlitz and Get a Clue solo!) and copying a bunch more routes. Checkers and Flame Thrower were two non-public routes I was able to find with minimal difficulty as well. Flame Thrower in particular was a lot of fun to work out a route for in the editor, and then I just adjusted when I would pick up certain chips and scored 370.6 immediately. A small tweak to the last room to trade [1] for [2] and a chip was all it took for the bold of 371. I also found the Alphabet Soup route a few days before scoring it (thanks James for pointing out that my 948 was the 949, but missing a move in execution which snowballed >_<).
Three days ago I got access to MSCC. It was the second most frustrating experience I've had with this game (I'm getting to the most frustrating, don't worry) as Every. Single. Input. was delayed by an entire move. I had to count out how many times to press the key individually, then not screw up the rhythm and on the longer walks I was counting "1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3" or "1-2-3-4 1-2-3" or something else like that. The actual teleport skip in Graduation was trivial. This was bold 493.
The previous two days were spent on long sokobans. On the Rocks and Mind Block were both very simple to score, especially after noticing Mind Block had a consistent pattern and 'merge point' in cloning another block. One of the biggest route memorization aids I've found is finding a place that must be visited between phases and remembering what happens between those visits to that point. For Warehouse I, the next bold I scored, that was dropping a block into a bomb. Executing and remembering the route took a couple attempts, but was ultimately much easier than I anticipated. Yet Another Puzzle took a few more tries than I expected but was still fairly easy.
And then we got to Warehouse II.
I tried scoring Warehouse II back when I first played through CCLP2 last year. It didn't end well and I took b-191 initial solve. I expected a repeat, but all the maneuvers made sense to me this time around (thank you, optimizing Shifting Maze out to 832!) and I was able to score the perfect decimal after only about 60 minutes! I expected it to take much longer than that. Oracle II on the other hand, was an interesting blend of everything thus far. Long opening (2.5 minute first room, very easy to remember) and then a more complex second half that I kept making small mistakes during. I was still able to score 598 after another hour or so, though it nearly gave me a heart attack when I lost 3 moves on the final trip up from the bottom! (oof, oof, missed spring slide)
And so I reached 499 MS bolds.
All the way back at 470ish I decided that number 500 should have an appropriate title and you already know it's Which One Next?
This was a dumb decision. I regret everything. This was the most frustrating experience- not for remembering the route, no, that was easy with a carefully notated map ( http://i.imgur.com/VldpXwA.png). All of my frustration here came from execution, as there is really nothing hard in this level (other than the 11 teleport run about halfway through). But I kept screwing up the simplest things, and it took me 3 hours of attempts (over the span of a lot longer than that) to realize I was trying to teleport too fast. Slowed down the pace, found the right rate, and had a flawless run going all the way until 30 seconds left, where entered a station from the wrong side. Then I had another perfect run to the very last teleport sequence, where I still went too fast. Finally, I managed to not screw up the ending after losing [1] in the 11 teleports to take my 795 and 500th bold.
I am not looking forward to Oversea Delivery after that.
Anyway, thoughts on a couple levels and stuff!
CC1 levels
Lesson 7: Taught me how to boost sort of okay. I kind of brute forced attempts until scoring bold 20+ months ago.
Trinity: Taught me how spring slides sort of worked. I kind of held the key every time and hoped to change directions right. Now I know to double tap things.
Hunt: Taught me that following every step exactly the same as a reference route is a recipe for dumb mistakes. I copied the beginning and then just made up a path for the rest as it really didn't matter.
Blobnet: Much much later, taught me how to spot whether blobs were on their moving turns or their non-moving turns.
Blink: Taught me how to spring slide properly- with the double tap and then direction change. I do still hold sometimes for when all the direction changes are equally offset, however.
Arcticflow: Taught me that practicing specific areas was much easier with a copy of the level edited to only be that area. It still wasn't an easy bold at all.
Mishmesh: Taught me how to play off a map. This has come in handy a LOT.
Seeing Stars: Taught me that pausing to help remember routes was viable. I've since honed this quite a bit farther, but for the sake of real time I rarely use this technique.
I Slide: Taught me the value of good notes. This has also come in handy a LOT, and not just with simple moves. Combining an encoding, textual instructions and a map on the side is how I execute routes with a lot of variety and backtracking.
Spooks: Taught me that pieguy is unsurpassable, and sometimes unreachable. Also taught me that J.B. is nearly on the same level.
Four Plex: Taught me that the publicly available route, even when it's the bold, isn't always perfect.
Cityblock: Taught me that pieguy is beatable, hooray!
Mixed Nuts: Chips under blocks are apparently my specialty and I learned more about how spring slides work to save time here. Still not enough for a new record.. :/
Mix Up: Taught me I could remember long sokoban routes. It was around here that the reasons why certain orders saved time started clicking for me.
Yorkhouse, and to a lesser extent Catacombs: Taught me not to trust Andrew Bennett's probability calculations. They always err on the side of optimistic, as Catacombs is 1/655 and not 1/455 and Yorkhouse is way below 10% odds. The grind was annoying, but...
CCLP1 levels
Graduation: Taught me that MSCC is garbage and how did I ever play with this and how did anyone ever put up with this and how does James even manage now it's impossible. Also, Teleport Skip Glitch is easy someone add to Tile World please so I can score Skelzie.
Wedges: I can blocks!
Tetragons: RFFs aren't that bad...
Square Dancing: Always test your routes before counting moves, and always count the free first move when counting moves.
Descending Ceiling: If something seems weird about the scores people have, there's probably a couple tricks to find and each person missed a different thing. Applied to Get a Clue. (hint, hint)
Who's the Boss?: Shift-O is dumb.
H2O Below 273 K: holy crap this game gets hard to execute fast wow (273 -.9 still very happy with this thanks)
Mini Pyramid: Yeah, chips under blocks are definitely my specialty.
Chip Kart 64: Note to self: sliding less tiles is faster than sliding more tiles due to more overrides and boosts.
Colors for Extreme: Keep an eye out for blocksliding opportunities. Technically applies to Booster Shots as well, but this came first chronologically so
Bowling Alleys: Just because a lot of the top players have the score doesn't mean it's optimal. Also applies to Get a Clue, but this came first. Also, just because you barely scraped another second out of the level doesn't mean that your decimal is optimal.
The Shifting Maze: Yep. I can definitely blocks. Shuffling everything around, more loops, small timesaves, small "hey I don't need that!" moments... this is probably one of the most complex CCLP1 routes to develop.
Time Suspension: When grinding RNG, set aside an entire day, have other things prepared to keep from getting bored, and the pull of a new record can outweigh a lot of tedium/boredom. Also, walkers are worst monster. By a lot.
Portcullis: You can slip by the single ice tile clone thingy in Lynx. Huh.
Easier Than It Looks: Ok seriously if the same route hasn't scored a second higher yet it's not going to without a change. Also, pay attention to teleports and where they lead. This can shortcut (hi Countdown!)
Cineworld: Half waits suck.
CCLP2 levels
Use the Fish: Taught me to just boost for it when failure means death: going to slow means a restart in this setting!
Madd Maze: RFFs suck. Just thought you ought to know.
Just Enough: Tedious, tedious, tedious, so glad I get to copy a route instead of have to iterate the timing of everything myself...ugh.
Roller Coaster: Just because the AVI is perfect doesn't mean I have to be perfect. Think through if moves can be lost, and if so, where do they start mattering. This goes double for the TWS losing 0 to the blobs but 6 to the walkers. I lost 8 to the blobs and 0 to the walkers in my run, since the walkers will often either let you past or kill the attempt.
Monster Factory: Sideswipes exist. Better routes for travelling salesman problems don't.
CircleMaze: Pay VERY close attention to heavy boosting sequences. 475 takes very little luck and 476 does not require >R (override) >R (override) >R at the end.
Captured: Mouse clicks aren't so bad...
Gauntlet: Random results will behave differently for everyone. I knew this already, but James mentioning how bad it feels getting stuck in the trap on 458 potential had me expecting it to happen on my first try past the walkers, so I was pleasantly shocked when it didn't!
CCLP3 levels
Lot in Life: Illogical routes sometimes trump logical routes. My poor 95 MS....my 95 Lynx though is pretty logical. Not easy to find without the right insight, though.
Map the Path: It pays to be in the right place at the right time for the scoreboards. I was around when J.B. found 245, and was able to find it before anyone else came online. Looking back, I think this is the moment I realized "yeah. I can actually do this optimization thing."
Recess: Even bad levels make CCLPs sometimes.
Spiral: See previous level comment.
Blazes: James gets ridiculous insights with monster interactions. Pay attention to them.
Get a Clue: Pieguy is not perfect. I am able to find things he missed sometimes. (This, combined with the imminent J.B. look got me to take a look at Cityblock and score 550).
Flame Thrower: Just because one person found routing the level easy/hard does not mean I will find it easy/hard. J.B struggled, I had no trouble. Conversely, James found 825 on ACD and I still don't see how an improvement isn't 826. I suppose finding a "half cycle" on the balls would be the key.
Once Upon a Troubadour: Moving mouse clicks are a pain when boosting is involved. At least it's short.
Countdown: Just because bold has been reached doesn't mean you should stop looking. Shoutouts to Shane for finding the trick I missed to raise 71 to 72, though if we hadn't, triple joint bold with J.B. would have ensued
Checkers: Miika is really good with blocks. Listen to his ideas. In Lynx, slaps are awesome, splash delay is not, avoiding splash delay is.
Mediterranean: Collabs are awesome. Long teleport runs are not.
Which One Next?: Ok, what did I just say? Oh right, long teleport runs are not awesome. This is a bad level. Yay 500 bolds with appropriate title (and 501 has a recommendation already).
Lead Us Not into Temptation: Walkers are still worst monster. Also this is more likely than Time Suspension, which is still unconfirmed. Despite the route having been public since I scored it.
Manic Depression: Sometimes, just sometimes, randomness will go your way the first chance it gets. Also cross checking into rams is awful and the first bunch of this level is a huge pain.
Mr. McCallahan Presents: Some busts are convoluted and use every part of a level and several obscure mechanics. This helped me fix Fish in a Barrel before anyone else caught the ridiculous MS only bust in UC4.
Chip Cup
I would have had a real shot in the 2014 Cup had I been around to enter the super competition...oh well. I still did well for what I was able to enter. I went into the 2015 season aiming to win, and so far I've built up quite the lead. Got sniped on the pieguy award with the survival competition last year by pieguy himself. Still haven't had a single treasure hunt competition to enter. Sometimes, the rule that better Lynx scores are counted as equivalent is silly when Lynx is clearly faster by a significant margin. The Power of Slide Delay Compels You! is a great level and I had a lot of fun trying to make everything I wanted to do with it fit into the level, as well as tweaking the slide delay rooms. J.B. is not infallible with optimization and can be beaten in time trials (I did so twice!). If a level gets updated, always look over the new possibilities.
The past 22 months have been a ton of fun. Here's to another long period of time, more intricate routes, more fun levels and stellar community packs! I'm coming for that CCZone Awards Leaderboard overall first

Speaking of raising the bar, that was quite a find you made recently! I do have hopes to give CCLP1+4 a go some day, but I have a couple of other projects I want to be finished (or at least reasonably finished) first. You're the second person to ask me about SuperCC. I haven't checked it out, but based on the description it seems similar to the tool I use. Went ahead and joined Discord.
And, um...
cclp3 #71 (How to Get Around in Venice): 431 (+25, b+1)
6093980

Chip's Challenge 3 is apparently happening eventually. Here are some improvements from CC2 that I would like to see.
Need-to-haves:
A sand tile. This would block monsters and blocks but allow Chip and Melinda (with hiking boots?) to cross. There is no tile with these properties in CC2 while even Chuck's Challenge has one. Using fake green walls as a block blocker is awkward.
A no-drop tile. An overlay tile that prevents boots from being dropped on it. Blank no signs and no signs with irrelevant tools technically do the job but they are unsightly and don't convey their intent as well as a dedicated tile would.
Native support for zero-directional blocks. This is the most commonly used "hacked" tile and is a logical extension of the other directional blocks.
Wiring on a separate layer. Wiring in CC2 is powerful, but still held back by their restriction to being placed on just floor and steel walls. The ideal solution is to combine the best of CC1's connection system and CC2's wiring system and allow wires to exist on a dedicated layer. Visibility while playing a level could be toggled by a key and they could appear as a transparent overlay. This would also fix the oddity of pink and black buttons not appearing when hide logic is on.
More consistent monster behavior. Bugs and rovers should not avoid canopies. Fireballs and ghosts with flippers should not avoid turtles. Rovers with fire boots should not avoid fire.
Support for bowling balls starting on clone machines. The ghost setup takes up an absurd amount of space for such a simple result.
Allow blocked green teleports to be skipped over.
Support for lowercase letters.
Give teeth monsters north-facing tile, and give blue teeth the same number of animation frames as red teeth.
Automatic recording while playing a level, like Tile World's. This should be easy to apply to normal play since it already exists in the editor.
Higher res graphics, 64x64? No 3D graphics like Puzzle Studio or Chuck's Challenge please
Extra green chip/bomb tiles.
More diverse sound effects. CC2 has fewer sound effects than the original Lynx game despite the wealth of new elements.
Important bug fixes:
Disallow hooks from attempting to pull monsters.
Disallow the player from being able to slap monsters.
If blocks can be pushed consecutively on floor, allow them to be pushed consecutively on force floors.
Trap logic fix, including multiple trap button problems and the issues with wired traps
Consistent snatching and hook block slapping behavior (i.e. not monster order related)
Flame jet max distance fix
The two disappearing Chip glitches and the Waterbirth glitch
Thin wall on closed side of railroad should not have any effect except when the RR sign is equipped
Allow player to step off force floor if they start the level on them
Allow key inventory to exceed 255.
Want-to-have fun stuff:
Allow blocks to be pushed at 2x speed when Chip has speed boots.
Make blocks have no effect on recessed walls. This would revert their behavior back to CC1. Ice blocks and directional blocks would still be able to be pushed on them, and turtles could still retain the CC2 "flicking" behavior.
More thin tiles: walls are the only tiles to have thin versions of them even though other tiles could be adapted to this concept. Puzzle Studio has thin toggle walls. Thin gravel, thin force floors, thin recessed walls, etc. have potential.
Lasers: Puzzle Studio and Escape have these. A beam it shot in one (or more) directions until stopped by a wall and other elements like blocks and perhaps monsters. Chip dies when hit by the beam. Maybe a beam receiver that converts the beam to an electrical current.
Reflectors: Chuck's Challenge has these, though they apply to the spitter enemy. Pushable block that reflects bowling balls and lasers 90 degrees. Could be rotated with train tracks.
Logic gate enhancements: Add NOR and XNOR gate for completeness. Add diodes which allow current in only one direction, the ability to specify a delay in frames from 1-10, which will make synchronizing circuits easier and remove the need for chained OR gates (Circuit City contains an example of long OR gate chains)
"Frictionless" blocks (don't have a better name): Copy of the yellow blocks from Escape. These are blocks, once pushed in some direction, that continue on a straight path until they hit an obstacle. Think of tanks but pushable in any direction by Chip.
Score gate: Exists in Challengo, essentially a socket that the player can open if they have enough points but will deduct from their score.

Yep, it's that time again, where a designer puts some record of their thoughts about their levels for everyone else to read. Today I'm going to be talking about Ultimate Chip 6, which contains 60 levels and will probably not be updated for quite a while to come. So let's dive right in!
1. Welcome to the 21st Century
This was one of the first levels I put together after the time trial designs, and the goal was to craft a simple itemswapper with a very sprawling feeling to it. Does it feel like something that would have been made around the time CCLP2 was made? Possibly- but the design still has the modern touches of no rooms or hallways being diagonally adjacent. That's something that I personally don't like the look of in most cases, and that's why this level curls back in on itself. In hindsight, it's not the best introductory level for this set, but I didn't really have a better one, and I'm not unhappy with it as it shows that UC6 can and will contain... whatever I felt like throwing in.
2. Quantum Tunneling
After Miika ran a mini TT with his own level, Twice the Fun, I decided I liked running through the upper ball corridor, especially with how the balls would bounce off to always allow passage if the first was survived. So I went with that on a smaller scale, added a bunch of bombs and a force floor slide to give the balls a second purpose, and had an easy level that was pretty fun to play.
3. Snowball Mountain
Back to back ice aesthetic levels! I tend to use ice and force floors a lot in my designs, and also have an aversion to large empty spaces (that I'm working on, thankfully). Anyway, this level was originally conceived as a maze TT level, but it proved too easy to route. Level name borrowed from Ape Escape 2, continuing the trend of monkey game named ice themed levels after UC3's Frosty Retreat, UC4's Hot Springs, and UC5's Snowy Mammoth. Unfortunately, I'm out of Ape Escape ice levels without monkey puns in the name for the future!
4. Repetitive Repetition
I had just watched the Game Maker's Toolkit episode on Hitman and the art of repetition, and had the thought- what if I could turn that into a CC level? That's kind of what optimizing already does, but how can I capture that feeling to create an entire level around it? Then the concept kind of morphed into "hey, let's make the same room 3 times but with minor variations that allow shortcuts lol" and it's not that good of a level. However, I've since re-used this repeated room idea to make a much better level that very few people have seen- I'll release it eventually guys, but for now, James says it's super legit.
5. Key Free
The original idea here was a puzzle level where you'd alternate sides taking keys and boots and having to move several objects around in a multi-stage puzzle. Then I couldn't figure out how to begin designing such a puzzle and still don't have a clue (concept is up for grabs!), so around Thanksgiving I sat down at a relatives' house and threw this together. One of Tyler or Shane got tripped up by this level, surprisingly. It's pretty easy with a load of extra keys, but as a little optimizing bonus it's possible to end with the fire boots on the left side, saving some time. Honestly, that little tidbit is why this level stayed in its current form- I added a decent amount of little bonuses for the attentive in this set, and I'll point them out in these musings.
6. Sneaking in the Back Door
Ahhh, this level. When I set out to build this level, I knew I wanted it to be rotationally symmetric and on an island, but beyond that I didn't have too much of an idea. Then I decided to place chips with a lock on one side, and a bomb on the other. This led to adding a teeth monster in order to skip a key, and the original design had 2 of each key and 1 teeth, requiring 0 teeth bombs. Then I changed it to 4 teeth and 1 of each key, and wasn't sure which version was better, as this was meant to be a fairly easy level. Mostly thanks to Miika's suggestion, I took a third option of 3 teeth (better symmetry at the start!) and 1 of each key, requiring 3 back door entries. You do have to be a little careful, but it's still not too difficult.
7. Tonberry Estates
Walls from Key Farming, was entered in the Walls of CCLP1 create competition. Again, I'm mentioning Miika, but I'm sorry- that sokoban is clever and fits perfectly in the room. Oftentimes teleport sokobans revolved around partial posts, so I set out to build one that was non-trivial in that space and used the teleports as alternate loops. The rest of the level is some simple itemswapping, dodging and chip collecting, before some semi-blind fireball manipulations with a toggle button. I went through great pains to keep this part from being cookable, and I think I succeeded- though if you're not careful with the locks used earlier, you can render the fireball stuck. Don't do that.
8. Encased, Just In Case
Oh look, a Time Trial level! This sort of chip collecting romp isn't too interesting to just play, but routing it was actually quite interesting. The original version of the level had recessed walls instead of red and blue obstacles, which would have created easier shortcuts but ultimately been less interesting. Other than that, there's not much to say here.
9. Tunnel Boring Machine
I do like monster manipulation challenges quite a bit, and this level is nothing but a monster manipulation challenge, albeit a very lenient one with respect to monsters. You only need 8 or 9 total I think, and there are 16 in the level. That said, the dirt involved is a limited resource that has to be used somewhat carefully in order to access the central chips. Some will probably find this level boring (insert rimshot here) but I liked playing it in testing and still think it's a fun level- takes a little thought, but not full focus.
10. Tesla Foil
Josh mentioned a concept about unmaking partial posts, so I tried my hand at building a level like that. Unfortunately, teleports can be pretty broken and the level is irredeemably busted. Despite this, the intended path is pretty interesting, using symmetry in design but distinct rooms to keep a theme going without overstaying its welcome. Oh and the ending has been described as "what" and "bonkers", even though it's just a toggle door path Even with the bust, this is one of my favorites from the set.
Now I see why Andrew has done his designer commentary in groups of 10 levels. Must upstage everyone though- onwards to another... 5.
11. Red, Brown and Red
Another time trial level, this time with a cloning theme and obviously inspired by Red, Green and Blue. Optimizing cloning is very difficult, as it generally devolves into chaos and just trying everything. My goal with this and the other level was to craft a cloning level based around ideas and specific smaller scale collisions, rather than spamming the button and hoping everything works. Did it work here? For the most part- the toggle door at the end was the trickiest part to try to route, and a solution one second faster than my 90% logical solution exists. When I was optimizing this (as I did so before the competition to ensure the process was reasonable) I identified a timing that would clear out the lowest bombs, and then tried a few variations with the spare moves I had until I found one that was fast. As a casual level, it's okay, borrowing more from Four Plex without the toggle buttons. Slightly tedious perhaps, but not uninteresting, thankfully.
12. Primordial Ooze
Mazes with force floor walls have become slightly overdone in recent times- Forced Circuit by Josh, Jungle Fever by J.B., Cluttered Crosswalks and Bisection by me... these all do different things with the core concept, but ultimately are mazes where the walls aren't always walls. In this level, named after the second level of Ape Escape, I didn't really do anything to spice up the force floor sections. However, the water mazes I took advantage of the fact that they're water and added a few blocks to bridge to otherwise unreachable areas, adding a small thinking element to the maze. A few toggle doors to take advantage of the force floors later, and I had a symmetric chip placement maze that's actually pretty fun to play.
The time limit is 280 because my time attack time is 2.80, though this will be dropping about .05 soon
13. Transmission
After You Can't Teach an Old Frog New Tricks came onto the scene, full level monster guidance puzzles have almost universally been difficult, with Andrew's One Tank's Adventure being the easiest. Others that come to mind are Guiding Light (me), Set-up (Shane), Get the Ball Rolling (J.B.) and A Bug's Life (me), using most of the monsters in the game. I'd even tried making a level like this before I'd played OFNT that featured a blob, titled... A Boy and His Blob in UC2. However, that left a gap in easy guidance levels, and the humble paramecia is often forgotten, so I elected to change that. Side note- gliders and walkers still need this kind of level, unless there is one for either of them that I'm unaware of.
Anyway, this level has another one of those bonuses for the attentive- there's no chip socket, as the chips were a last minute addition to try to trick people into doing extra steps. The dirt section can be done from either direction, the toggle and tank rooms require active attention (and setting up the tank room was a pain) and the ice room has been complained about, but it can be set up in advance or you can actually move the blocks with the paramecia chasing you! Yes, it's possible!
14. Interdependent Line
Walls from Eddy's Honey Bomb, found in NSG-Rejects. This one was honestly inspired by The Witness, in a weird sort of way. There's nothing too out of the ordinary here, just a key ordering puzzle with a simple gotcha, a recessed wall section outlining some gravel, and luring a teeth through half the level to gain access to the exit. The means of exiting was something I'd specifically wanted to use for a little while, and the socket being only the first step out of several was another common design trope I wanted to avoid. Yep, UC6 as a whole looks at conventional design decisions, uses them for the most part, but the moment they became inconvenient I ignored them... which wasn't often.
15. Crazy Box
LOL walker level. I still think Hysteria from UC5 is my best walker dodging level, but come on- it's practically mandatory to include one of these.

First levelset dedicated to Miika:
After being away from the game for over two years, I got interested in playing and designing Chips games once again. At first I just wanted to chose one of my favorite levels - "Road to Chip's Heaven" and totally rebuild it - which I have now done- called BRIDGES..
I started looking around the site to catch up on what has been going on. I realized that I had forgotten so much that I needed to email a few of my Chipster friends to relearn a few things, etc. Josh Lee was the only one that I was able to contact for help, which he has gracious been doing.
When I was looking around the site, I read Miika's blog and noticed that Miika had also recently returned after being away for while. While reading Miika's blog, I saw a man that plays the game with integrity, not looking at an editor to see what to do. (I can't say that I do that) He likes to have the time to figure things out on his own. That is why I made the BRIDGES levelset. The two levels are just about the same except for the North West corners. The first level has no time limit to give the opportunity to figure out the level without running out of time. For those that like to approach the game like Miika, I had the idea that once the player knows the scheme of the layout, the player can then move on to play the second level to see how well it can be plaid - time wise. Also, the second level has a stealthy shortcut, which could be fun to discover.
Due to Miika's approach to the game, and him coming back at about the same time as myself, I want to dedicate my first levelset to Miika. I have called it "BRIDGES" and have upload it.
Note: Since I first made this blog (the first time), I discovered a mistake that I had made in my first upload, as I had added some block in the South East corner to make it look more symmetrical (that was a mistake) because I should have checked the level out before uploading the set. Well, since I had to fix that, I have made other improvements as well. plus redesigning the North West corner area. I left the North West corner in the second level the same as it was in the first upload. So, there are two version of that area. The first level's is probably a little more difficult. I apologize to those player that have already downloaded the mini level-set. I promise to do much better about checking things out. I am confident that BRIDGES is right now.
It's good to be back!
Ian Wilson-( thinker I.D.)

This about the CC2 game engine compared to CC1. Not the levels or game elements.
First of all, years ago; When I was first forced to start using tileworld [because MS chips challenge doesn’t work on 64 bit Operating systems] I used the MS rule set. That’s what I was used to and I liked it better. Lynx seemed very weird at first and I didn’t really like how a few amount of seemingly simple rule set changes really made for some major changes in level design.
After a while however I got used to Lynx and grew to like it better. Now, I pretty much prefer it and I can’t really stand MS anymore. The main reasons; smooth animations not only look nicer, they make it much easier to play, to see where monsters are going and easier to follow chip around as well. Now whenever I play MS it feels so choppy and annoying. Secondly the glitches in MS are a pretty big hassle. Most notably slide delay and the controller/boss glitch. So it’s really nice to not have to deal with that.
But now that CC2 has been released I must say that I like that so much better than either MS or tileworld’s Lynx. Not only because the game and the new features are awesome, but I like the game engine better. I feel like movements are slightly smoother and more fluid. It also feels like the hit-detection on enemies is friendlier than Lynx. So often when playing in tileworld I die while trying to step into a line of enemies or get caught by a monster when I wasn’t expecting it. I often misstep, either moving too far or not enough. If I’m really honest my playing experience with Tileworld’s lynx has been quite frustrating.
Since I started playing CC2 I haven’t found any of these frustrations, at least not nearly to the degree of tileworld. The hit detection is very nice imo, the controls are slightly easier and feel better. I like the ability to reveal walls while passing by them, and the “splash delay” is minimal too. This was another nuisance in Lynx.*
CC2 has its share of glitches too of course; some of which while I haven’t run into yet myself, I would image may be quite frustrating. But so far, nothing I’ve encountered has been as game-breaking as the MS glitches. Overall I really feel the improvements on CC2 far outweigh any negatives verses CC1. So for the most part I’ve stopped playing CC1, though I still play a level or two occasionally, I haven’t deleted the game forever or anything like that. But from now on it’s primarily CC2 for me. And any level sets I make will be for CC2.
What other people’s thoughts on this?
*this is a side point but that splash delay is weird imo. I recently saw a video of the Amiga version of chips challenge [which in graphical quality looks very similar to the Lynx] there is no splash delay at all!

Hi, I guess I'm momentarily back. Recently I was hungry for a new puzzle game and decided to play through CCLP1. I was heavily active in the months before CCLP1, but burnt out too early to really play through it. I beat about 25 levels when the set was released, but quickly lost motivation and quit CC. So this was, for the most part, blind. I played the game on tile world lynx (as opposed to the awful, buggy and somehow popular 5fps port) and beat all but one level in 4 days. This isn't my return to the community, I simply felt like playing CC recently. I feel like I have somewhat of an outsiders perspective and haven't really been influenced by the hype.
The set starts of exactly as you'd expect. However, after the well-picked lesson levels, CCLP1 presents a medley of about 80 levels which were all designed for the level 15 slot. No individual level was actually bad, however by level 100 I noticed that the set I was playing through hadn't reached Tossed Salad difficulty yet. Am I really not trusted to figure out how to dodge the enemies 2 seconds into Starry Night, or experiment on puzzles? I remembered back to the strategic dodging on Digger and Blobdance; the creative puzzles Four Square and Catacombs; and Blobdance and On The Rocks, which dared to be difficult. Due to an excessive focus on beginner-friendliness and "fair" design (can it be beaten it in 1 try), CCLP1 is simply boring. This is not a replacement for CC1.
I understand that this game was targeted at beginners, not me, so please don't get too offended by anything I say. I know I'm being harsh. But this is just how I personally felt about the set.
After the early-game snoozefest, however, the set becomes a lot better, and I enjoyed most of the triple digit levels. If only the set had reached this point sooner, and I see no reason why it didn't, I would've really like it overall. Thief, You've Taken All That Was Me was hands down my favourite level in the set. I guess that shows what kind of a game I was hoping for.
Will I come back for CCLP4? Perhaps. Right now I'm even entertaining the idea of LPing it, but who knows how many times I'll change my mind in the decade before it gets released. One thing's for sure: if I ever play that Chips Challenge set, it's because I want a challenge. Something with a difficulty peak that puts CCLP3 to shame. But that seems unlikely, since certain members of the community will denounce anything that takes them more than one attempt to beat. At the very least, I want that feeling of being stumped by a puzzle. And that feeling of solving it after so much time and thought. I only weakly felt that twice in the four days it took me to finish this set.

It makes me happy to see you're still here from time to time, raising the bar for the rest of us to aspire to reach. Do you have any plans to look at CCLP1 or CCLP4 ever? (CCLP1 in particular would probably take you no time at all to blaze through.) Have you checked out Markus' SuperCC optimization tool; if so how does it compare to your own programs that you no doubt have made? Is there any chance of you ever gracing us with your presence in the Discord server? Hopefully your life is going well; when you achieve world domination please treat us kindly

Sometime in 2016, I attempted at a project that would have been my ultimate CC1 set - Walls of CCLP1. I was inspired enough by Joshua Bone's Walls of CC1 to attempt it but as an actual CC1 set.
It looked promising, I had built about 20 levels for it, but due to lack of ideas and just the overall thought I was probably trying too hard, I lost sight of the project and aborted it completely.
What was made for it was savaged and placed into what some call "JoshL6-extended", but the thought of fully doing a walls of set remained in the back of my mind since then, just at that point in time, I wasn't ready. Maybe it was best to save it for another day.
Then out comes Walls of CCLP4, which brought back an amazing amount of inspiration to try a walls of set again. But there was a problem now. I already tried with CCLP1 and didn't want to go at it again so I passed that up (Both J.B. and Isaac started up their own Walls of CCLP1 sets anyway!)
As mentioned, CC1's were being done by Joshua Bone and likewise CCLP2's walls by mobius respectively as CC2 sets, though neither of them as CC1 walls of sets honestly didn't sound fun so I passed them up as well. CCLP4... I did consider and it was very tempting since Jeffrey and I are vastly different designers so there probably wouldn't have been overlap? But at the end of the day I didn't want to take from Jeffrey's set so that was passed up too.
With that out of the way, what other official set was left?
CCLP3. Boy was this an interesting set to use for a walls of set but a really fun and challenging one nonetheless. Not only that, but CCLP3 is what brought me into this community, so this set despite my feelings towards it, has some kind of meaning to me. This project started on March 27th, 2018, exactly 8 months ago, with Socket Shrine using Toggle Bust as the first designed level while Take a Bite of My Heart using Item Unlocker being the last designed on November 15th.
Working on this set reminded me not to be afraid to design certain things and don't let others dislikes affect what you want to build. Compared to all my other sets, this set I've easily put the most amount of effort into. There's no questioning that. I explored and toyed with so many concepts and ideas for this set like you wouldn't believe. I went with ideas I thought I'd never use. I worked with walls configurations I thought I'd never hit an idea on and almost certainly would have never built outside of this project. Every level I've made here... I had so much fun making each and every one of them, even the ones that took forever to get an idea for. But that's the joy of building new levels out of predetermined wall patterns. There's always something new or different to build with them. Just look at Semi-Perfect Stronghold, Condemned Faculty, and Tank Game Reborn which all used wall patterns that have been used at least 3 times prior.
Now about the files - there are three of them:
Walls_of_CCLP3 is the difficulty ordered version and is the recommended/preferred one to play through.
Walls of CCLP3-A is the CCLP3 ordered version.
Walls of CCLP3-B is the order by how the levels were designed.
The latter two versions are included mostly for fun and whether you play through them instead is up to you. But be warned - those don't include a difficulty curve or any kind of content balancing whatsoever. In case I missed something that needs fixing, which is sadly always a possibility, all versions will be updated as so none get left out. Every level has been tested and solved in both rulesets.
Many thanks to the various people who have played through the iterative releases throughout the year and/or provided feedback! It was extremely appreciated and helpful in making this set as good as it can be.
Will this be my last CC1 set? Honestly with how many times I've said that, I doubt it at this point. CC2 designing has been on the mind lately but I won't ever ditch CC1 designing for it. Call it a comfort thing, but I have more fun with it than probably ever will for CC2. However, with CC2LP1 happening soon, who knows? I'll design whatever I want at this point. I have a few CC1 projects in mind at this very moment... but that's for another time.
And with that, I sincerely hope you enjoy my take on the Walls of CCLP3.
-Josh Lee [Flareon350]

CCLP1 (MS) 093: 327 (+3, b+1) [Flame War] (joint bold with Kacper, set November 5th)
So, this happened. I did say I was going to go for the rest of these if this happened...
028: 276 (+1, b) [The Last Starfighter] (1 hour of attempts, set November 6th)
I went for BoaP first, immediately after. After a few hours I went to sleep for the night. When I got back from work (early, due to being sick) on the 6th I didn't want to continue that grind. So, I went for this one and miraculously got it. Probably around 7-8 hours total, +/- 2 hours counting my past attempts. I'm super glad I didn't choke the execution here. Then back on the BoaP grind.
I ended up unable to go to work on the 7th due to this stupid cold. That just meant more blob time. 117: 255 (+2, b) [Blobs on a Plane] (8 hours of attempts, set November 7th)
It's better to be lucky than good. I made a tactical mistake on the way back from the suction boots after a good thirty second think, with a blob 2 tiles up and another 2U2R. I had misjudged the second blob and thought it could interfere, and so elected to step LU instead of U, deliberately spending my 2 moves of buffer. In hindsight, this was a mistake given the probabilities of success for what I knew. U was more likely to work as LU given an L blob move would spell disaster. Except, I had misjudged the step AND U would have been immediate death, as the blob moved D, and so LU was actually the correct decision in a vacuum for survival! Though even given hindsight, a very difficult move to have to make. And so, the last of the random levels fell. (further analysis shows that some of that analysis could be wrong. Regardless, my mental picture and the actual level didn't mesh and I made a questionable decision that happened to be the absolute correct one)
051: 274 (+1, b) [H2O Below 273 K] (slightly earlier today)
This one was inevitable. Still took 5 or 6 hours of attempts, but some heavy duty practice on the left half paid off. Dropped [1/2] in rooms 6 and 7 but hung on in the end. 6,006,000 (147 bolds) (b)

This is it, the final showdown with my thoughts. Wait, this is a thinly veiled FFX reference isn't it. HA HA HA HA HA okay this joke is overdone.
46. Synthetic Coral
One thing I find quite interesting to play is a field of blocks and water or bombs, and all you have to do is move around, building islands as you go. In particular, Plastic in the Ocean from UC5 directly inspired this- what if instead of having to bridge to the corners, you just had to pick up chips? Ultimately, it's quite easy- no Pentomino Lake without picking up the flippers, that's for sure. Unfortunately, splash delay does seriously hurt the level in Lynx... and I still need to finish CCLP4 in Lynx, right.
47. Blast from the Past
Finally, the first level I designed for this set! The only goal I had was to throw back about a decade, with pointless rooms, diagonal walls, and pointless boosting! Unfortunately, the level still ends up being fairly modern in its design, but hey- it's a fun variety level with 12 completely separate rooms with absolutely no interaction between them, nope. Don't even try sending the fireballs and gliders into the bomb room, I definitely didn't plan that to be a useful strategy and it most certainly wasn't forced on an older version of the level.
48. Happy as a Clam
I think few levels show my usual design style more than this level. I built the central room first (symmetry, level branching off of one core interesting room) and then the fireball room to the right. The gliders followed (single block+monsters in varied forms, simple collision telegraphed) and the rest of the level followed in the order it gets played. I'm especially happy with the fireball stream trick to get the blue key, and the final tank shuffling puzzle. Unfortunately SOMEONE (Tyler) busted this level and didn't get the full experience... but Shane did because I fixed the level.
49. Confusion Cave
My designer note for this level simply reads "Creative One Ways, Part 3?". I'm not sure how accurate that is, but when I tried resolving it well after I'd designed it I was quite confused, so I guess it does what I wanted it to. The highlight here is the fireball room and how it's completely impassible without a block.
50. Opal Shrine
For this level, I used the walls of Wall Jumping Up Waterfalls to craft a non-linearly ordered variety level. The very first thing I tried to build in was a very lengthy final block path that would reuse most of the level, but this kept having to be scaled back and nerfed as there were ways around most of it. The initial release didn't require the block path it currently does as I had liked the shortcut, but after Tyler didn't even entertain the possibility of the intended path I took another look at the level and managed to require the oversized loop. In the final form, it's a fun level- I only wish the fireball manipulation was a little more clearly telegraphed in advance, as it's possible to fail right at the end.
51. Despotism
Walls from Communism. There are some weird hallway block loops to manipulate a single fireball through most of the level. It's not too interesting to play, but I'm still proud of the fact that I fit a completely different level inside Communism.
52. Outlast
Say hello to probably the only original concept in the entire set, because truly original concepts are hard to come by. Original executions, sure those are easy. But concepts? Have you ever seen a room where you had to keep a teeth from leaving a certain range, while also having to leave that range? The left room came first while experimenting with the concept of extending where you could step, and is rigid as a result. The right room followed as a "alright, now you understand it, now apply what you've learned" kind of room. It is possible to extract all 10 blocks, albeit not easily and it's not required in any case.
53. Immersion Circulator
Walls from Miika's Hexominoes. While I was skimming through custom sets for interesting arrangements of walls, that level jumped out at me. Sure, it was originally used for a collectathon, but there was some serious potential for reinvention there. Once I stripped the level bare... I had nothing. So I built the outside aesthetic, laid down a few objects to partition the level (most notably the tank guarding two red keys) and just built upwards from there. This is probably the longest level in the set despite only having a 496 time limit. Why 496? Because it's the third perfect number, after 6 and... 28. Naturally, I ensured that's how many chips there were. That sounds like something Miika would do.
54. Navigating Neptune
Obligatory blue wall maze with some shortcuts and I made the fireball puzzle first and kept that theming for rooms to open shortcuts.
Okay bye.
55. Lebanon
So, funny story about skimming through custom sets for interesting walls- Cyprus was a given. I immediately hit on the idea of limiting cloning to make a sardine can and then blockslide multiple blocks off of the same slide... but then actually executing the area took hours and was still broken for quite a while. Eventually though, I had a first puzzle and the tanks always changing (everything up to the fireball+tank room) and had no ideas for the remainder of the level, and it'd been sitting there for a while. Well, I had clone machines in place as partitions, but still.
A month or so later Josh and I collabed and I sent him the half finished level.
I got back the dodging sections and outer block part a day or so later- not what I would have gone with, but hey- it worked and was pretty fun! Though I noticed a few ways to squeeze out extra blocks from the end and made it required (touching the border is also required!) and telegraphed the gimmick of all blocks having gravel under them early, as it could be seen as unfair without that first block. Then I added my own block manipulation section to reach a hidden hint and called it a level.
Time limit is 961 because apparently that's the area code of Lebanon.
56. Monotone
I hope you don't dislike invisible walls.
57. Mystery Caves
Mission statement: difficult linear campaign level. The first section was meant to have a bit of tangential story to it of a prison, and also set the tone with an "In a Nutshell" style area. In hindsight, it's a little mean to start there and force redoing it every time the teeth+ball room goes awry. I went back and forth on whether that dodging and manipulation was fair, but ultimately decided that it was since you can see what needs doing in advance. That said, the tank button to start the manipulation was the last thing I added to make it a little easier. Then you have a fantastic blockslide puzzle before a really cool ball room and a few assorted puzzles before a fake-out exit. I wonder if anyone will ever die to that walker. Probably not, but the room is lol.
58. Flight of the Prince
Entered in the Movie Madness Create, which it won. Inspired entirely by chasing Snape down in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and the gameplay suits this. You see a green flash and something go off the tower, immobile, and then get to move when it dies, just like the story. Then you have around 20 seconds that demand perfection in Lynx and near perfection in MS, with some pinpoint dodging checkpoints and minor itemswapping. I love how carefully tuned this level is to work in both rulesets, something I couldn't manage with Extreme Hold Right Adventure. I do wonder if the design is too mean, though, as you do need to get a decent amount of boosts to even solve the level in MS.
Regrettably, I couldn't keep a section in which the glider would merge into a 3 tile gap of pink balls and clone another, blocking the path for Chip. Why? Slide delay- waiting at the upper force floors would allow the glider to delay, bounce off a ball instead of merging in resulting in its death, and Chip could just walk into the fake exit. I tinkered with a few potential fixes, but ultimately settled on just making the slide delay not matter.
59. The Party We Have Never Seen
Soundtrack for this commentary.
Fire and water have such a lovely aesthetic that I underuse.
Open-ended cloning puzzles are such an interesting design that, again, are underused.
Sooooo I made one with a semi-open order. Gotta get to the bug on the right first to open the block cloner, then do the three chip challenges before the two socket challenges that subvert the normal flow. Shane picked up on the main trick pretty quickly, likely because I telegraphed it in advance. He also spotted a solution I didn't catch to the upper area, which I'm not unhappy with. Originally I wanted to force bridging around the bomb, but he found a clever way to use the existing blocks to guide a fireball over- nicely done!
I'm not sorry for the random force floors on the exit path- good luck J.B., and at least it's untimed
60. A Chip Down Memory Lane
And finally, the walls from Archie's RUN OUT OF GAS in a spiritual sibling to Mental Marvel Monastery.
Fully intended alternate solution follows, with the description copied below:
Everything seen here is intended- I designed the level to have two solutions, and this one to feel busted. But nope- every little detail that juuuust works out is completely intended!
That being said, I did not tune any of the monster order or timings for this route. I'm pleasantly surprised by how little waiting around there is here. The overall design goal was to make a level like Josh's Mental Marvel Monastery- a throwback medley, of sorts. Strengthening the connection, I used the walls from Archie's "RUN OUT OF GAS" as my starting point, as Josh used Andrew R.'s "Producing". I also took care to make each part try to feel like something out of CC1- I'm not sure I succeeded, but that's why there are the (few) random pointless bits and certain other design choices.
Levels referenced in some way:
Nuts and Bolts, Elementary, Tossed Salad, Oorto Geld, Scavenger Hunt, On the Rocks, Lemmings, Seeing Stars, Chipmine, Bounce City (skipped), Reverse Alley, Block Buster, Now You See It, Short Circuit, Torturechamber, Miss Direction, and Alphabet Soup.

One strange thing about being away from participating in the CC level design scene consistently for several years is that returning to the editor doesn't quite feel as natural as riding a bike for the first time in several years. Design trends shift; even the way people play the game somewhat shifts as well. The last time I made a 149-level set, it was around the time CCLP1 was being produced. I created JBLP1 as something of a reactionary response to my previous level design efforts that made the cut for CCLP3. With that set's high difficulty, perhaps something easier was in order, and it certainly helped that the community was producing a level pack that seemed to be assembled with many similar sentiments at the forefront. Between then and now, we've seen three official set releases, one for an entirely new-to-us CC game, one a Lynx-compatible version of CCLP2, and the fairly diverse CCLP4, which saw many of the design trends seen in CCLP1 evolved a bit further.
So with all of that as part of the community's history, and with many designers trying to find their voice in the world of CC2 design, it seemed like as good a time as any for CC1 design to experience a bit of experimental renaissance as well. Perhaps not everything had to be a crowd-pleasing medium-weight level, or a neatly symmetrical design, though those certainly have their place. But there was still that element of where to even start with respect to design. That's when the latest level design trend offered a solution: the Walls Of level. Although Joshua Bone's Walls of CC1 (built for CC2) was the first to begin construction as a full reimplementation of an official level pack, Jeffrey Bardon's Walls of CCLP4 was the first such reimplementation to be fully completed. As a collective whole, CCLP4's walls offered some of the most open-ended redesign opportunities of any official set, and Jeffrey exercised a lot of care in ensuring that he built in concepts that complemented the layouts with which he worked while also giving them a distinct personality of their own.
After recording a full Let's Play of Walls of CCLP4, I was energized to begin construction on my own full Walls Of set. CCLP1 felt like the next best thing, and arguably more than CCLP4, it provided a decently wide range of level sizes in addition to wall patterns. If anything, I knew building an entire set out of an official set's walls would stretch me as a designer in ways I wasn't used to, and force me to embrace unconventionality that I wasn't normally so quick to embrace. The first level, Miniature Overture, was built on April 18, 2018, somewhat as a shoutout to Jeffrey's set opening with a layout from an Archie Pusaka level. From there, The Manhattan Project, Open Circuit, and Crown Jewels were built within that one night, and the rest of the set took off from there. Many of the most difficult levels were made within the first third of the set being built, which helped define some degree of expectation of what the difficulty curve could look like (certainly steeper than CCLP4). I took a break after building the 60th level, Just Passing Through, but would return to the editor in September while on a business trip to construct the next stretch of 20 levels, starting with Every Bomb Has a Silver Lining after I thought about building a spiritual successor to Color Coordination. After building level 80, Chip! In! Spaaaace!, I took another hiatus to focus on optimizing, but later came back in the new year to build the remaining 69 levels within an eight-week sprint, starting with A Mine Is a Terrible Thing to Waste and ending with Manaan on February 28, 2019.
Looking back, I'm thankful for the various opportunities to get out of my design comfort zone. I probably wouldn't have had the idea for, say, You Break It, You Buy It if I didn't have Present Company to work with. Half the challenges in When One Door Closes probably wouldn't exist if Utter Clutter wasn't such a tightly constructed set of walls that inspired outside-the-box thinking. And the unusual layout of Booster Shots pushed me to use a palette of tiles in some fun ways to create Slick Slimy Slurpee. Every challenging layout crossed off the list felt like a personal triumph and urged me to keep pressing on and continue designing, and I'm so grateful for that. Overall, I'm fairly happy with how the set turned out!
A few notes on the distribution: this download contains a .zip file with three versions of the set, much like Josh Lee's Walls of CCLP3 (which was also inspired by Jeffrey's set as well!). The "unlabeled," vanilla version, Walls_of_CCLP1.dat, is the intended way to play through the levels and is ordered mostly by difficulty. Walls_of_CCLP1_A.dat is the "wall order," in which all the levels are ordered by where their originating counterparts appeared in CCLP1. Finally, Walls_of_CCLP1_B.dat is the "design order," in which all the levels are ordered by when their first version was completed. Most updates from this point forward will more than likely be minor.
Enjoy playing, and be sure to leave a comment! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Another bump to this topic...
I have now added the CC2 level set section to my site. It is horribly out of date, so I would appreciate any and all help in getting it up to date.
http://pillowpc2001.net/levels/index.php?set=2
I eventually plan on correcting the solvability tables...right now they still look like the CC1 table and show/save a column for MS and Lynx. I have a note to ignore this for now and just use the MS column for submitting solvability, but hopefully this will be fixed soon.

CC1 (MS)
089: 402 (+2, b) [Block Buster]
5,977,370 (137 bolds)
Some stats...
I attempted this a lot a couple years ago, during my initial CC1 push. I had 0 successful green keys (on pace) but managed to get it once after a couple hours and played out the level for a 387. My score stayed there until yesterday. I grinded for about 2 hours and didn't get the green key at all, but through careful analysis of the 402 video, I was able to slowly but surely figure out common mistakes and avoid them. Then I got the green key and immediately messed up the second room. A while later, I'd gotten more green keys, bu no second room successes. Then I got one that was a move behind- died at third room. Then I got one on pace that ran into a wall immediately after the 4D. That was discouraging.
What wasn't discouraging was the fact that I was starting to get the green key much more often, so losing attempts past it didn't hurt as much. Then I finally reached the last room on 402 pace... and immediately missed the first block intercept. I played it out and ended up with a 385, which didn't even improve. A few green keys later, I got back... and missed the final half wait.
Day 1:
Green Keys: 35
Second Rooms: 12 (6, 12, 16, 19, 21, 24, 27, 28, 30, 31, 33, 35) (bolded numbers oofed after 4D) (italics is technically a fail)
Third Rooms: 7 (16, 21, 24, 27, 30, 31, 35)
Fourth Rooms: 0
After that set of attempts, I wanted to keep going, but my hand was too fatigued to get the DDDUULUR chain at the end at this point, so I stopped for the night. The next morning I tried for another hour, and after 2 consecutive failures to the DULUR to get the second block at the end, I took a pause. I'd been inputting at full speed and thinking I was going too slow. But a quick analysis showed that it was actually DUL (small pause) UR! With that gotcha realized, I had a few other boosting mistakes on the last 2 blocks, but I was consistent enough at getting to the end that it hardly mattered. I even got to the last 2 blocks on two consecutive attempts!
Day 2:
Green Keys: 17
Second Rooms: 10 (1, 2, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17)
Third Rooms: 10 (1, 2, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17) (bolded numbers are 401s that mis-executed the final boosting chain, but were perfect until after the last blockslide)
Fourth Rooms: 1 (17)
Total green keys to success: 52.
Total successful second rooms: 22 (yeah, 30 failures on the half waits and UU[1/2]UU stuff, + 4 5D instead of 4D)
Total attempts at the last room: 17.

Hey everyone. Remember me?
Maybe, maybe not. My last visit was in 2016.
The year 2017 was, honestly, quite a mess. It had its share of good things and bad things, but let's not go into the details.
A few months after I left, I found myself missing CC. Josh's email about CCLP4 rather made me want to come back. Looking back on it, I don't know why I didn't. Sure, life WAS busy, but surely I could have just stopped by?
Ah well. As my former girlfriend said, "regret is pointless. But the future is something we can change."
So I'm back.
Real life still IS busy, so I probably won't be as active as I used to. No more LPs. But I DO plan to check out CCLP4, and some custom sets, and keep expanding C1059-CC2.
Also, I wish to apologize to some people here. When I logged in today, I realized that I had a few PMs. I THOUGHT I had enabled email notifications, but apparently I didn't, leaving these people without a reply. Also, I wish to apologize for being somewhat of a jerk to Josh, Cyberdog, Michael, Zane, Alice, and other members I'm not thinking about at the moment. I'm sorry. I'll try to improve.
Also, Happy New Year everyone

Another day, another 15 levels worth of thoughts.
31. Blocks Aren't Us
I remember I was just toying around with bridging levels and hit on the teleport arrangement in the southern room, and how just those teleports would allow access to an entire room of water. From there, I decided to make a symmetric minimalist bridging level, because it's a rarely done genre. Bridging levels are really hard to keep from being tedious, and I figured that 4 distinct approaches/minor deviations from full water would work perfectly for making an enjoyable bridging level. With those two thoughts in mind, I built the force floor room, then the ice room and the glider room. In the first version of the level, the glider room had 2 gliders and it was manageable, but ultimately I decided it didn't really mesh with the rest of the level so I removed one of them.
32. Autumnal Forest
This was the last level I made for UC6, and stemmed from realizing I hadn't built the obligatory "variety/puzzle level where all the walls are actually blocks". While trying to come up with some new ideas of what to do with that design trope late at night, I had the following thought. "heheheh, what if instead of blocks I used LOCKS lol".
Naturally, this turned out to be a legitimately great idea. The individual challenges aren't too complicated in this level, but to me it's one of those fun levels that just flows. I also love revisiting older areas, and passing back through the fireball room was something that I felt just needed to be included as one of the final steps. Keeping the current key count in memory while designing was pretty tricky, and keeping it bust-proof was trickier.
33. Betwixt and Between
Walls from Fossilized Snow, before it became a CCLP4 level but after it was pretty clear it was going to make the cut. Around halfway through the sets' construction I looked through a bunch of custom sets for interesting walls to use as launching points, and figured that this could be used for... something. Quite some time later, I built a one block glider manipulation puzzle, using gravel and water to set two sets of boundaries. Finally, the means of exiting was something I hadn't really seen done too much, being a blind partial post off of the glider. Unfortunately, this wasn't very fun/fair, so I added the tank buttons to give an auditory cue. I play with sound on basically always, which seems to be a minority stance- but it makes sections like this so much easier! Oh, and the level is named after an area in Kingdom Hearts 2.
34. Hyperspace Runway
Walls from The Last Starfighter and level originally made for the Walls of CCLP1 create. TLS was selected not because the walls looked interesting, but because it was level 28 and I asked Jessi what level I should use. Naturally, 28 was selected because a while back, I got a 28 cycle Specter in an any% no infinite jump run that still turned out to be the record (linked below). From there, I realized that TLS was actually quite an interesting layout, so I ruined it with a bunch of force floor slides and blocksliding. At least the glider room is legit.
35. Snow Worries
Hey, another level named after a level in a game I used to speedrun, this time the 6th level in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger! In hindsight, this and the previous level probably shouldn't be next to each other, as Snow Worries is a blocksliding puzzle where the puzzle is figuring out how to set up a blockslide. Honestly, this is a level because I noticed the socket puzzle was possible (making a block bounce off a bouncing block) and wanted to make a level around it. The ending can be a little mean, but it's not too bad I don't think.
36. Center of Attention
Nothing too special here, just a four quadrants variety level with a sokoban, a monster manipulation, and some dodging. Sorry about the ending, I realllllly shouldn't have left it like that but since I found a way to do it without precise timing or the monster partial post, I left it >_<
37. Unlicensed Archaeology
Level originally designed for "The Five Rooms" create, where it placed second. I really didn't have any ideas for how restrictive the guidelines were for quite a while, and then I decided to just theme a level around blocks. Not just use blocks, but actually have that as the core theme. From there, the first room became an explosive romp, the third room a simple tank bypass, and the final room a simple symmetric bridging puzzle. That still left the second and fourth rooms, and the fourth seemed to fit a partial posting puzzle and socket clearing fun part easily. I can't think of a better description for the blue key search than "fun part" lol. Anyway, the second room was actually the first one I built and sent me down the rest of that path. I'm not sure exactly why I decided to use single blocks as walls with dirt as the enforcer, but I'm glad I did because it creates a natural series of small puzzles to figure out how to progress, and as the designer I had to make sure to leave a way back!
Level named while streaming Tetris Plus and just discussing random things with Jessi. The phrase came up, and I knew it fit this level perfectly.
38. It's a Small World
The very... second level I made for this set! Nothing too complicated here, just a teleport puzzle. I still had a lot of fun working out how to build 7x7 rooms in each corner, and I very much like the starting FF spiral. I guess being able to touch the border is unusual, too.
39. Christmas Armament
This is easily one of my favorite levels in the set, less due to how it plays and more due to the combination of concept and execution. Basically, I had the idea of farming red keys to get to the next room from the center, but wasn't sure how to fill each sub-room. Cue me (blob) pestering my brother (tank), my sister (walker), and my mom (teeth) to each build a 7x7 and 8x8 room. The tank maze room and block/bomb room are probably the best two, but the teeth puzzle is interesting as well. The force floor room underwent a lot of iterations before I settled on the more complex variation- originally it was a lot simpler.
40. Obligatory Block Shuffling Level
I needed to make a block shuffling level. I made a block shuffling level. The upper room came first and set the shape of the level and honestly isn't too hard, but the lower room took me a solid hour of tweaking to come up with. This is probably my best sokoban design to date with a couple tricky steps involved in the solution. What more is there to say about it?
41. Just Another Regular Thursday
Walls from Dave's A Puzzle. Other than the invisible wall with the tank (not required to make the level possible, but made it more fun) and the throwaway joke of blue walls + deadly obstacles in one of MY levels... there's not much here. It's kind of generic in a charming sort of way. Hey Dave, if you ever read this does this level look/feel like something you'd have built?
42. Choice Tools
Walls from Nitroglycerin, and entered in the Walls of CCLP1 create. This ended up being Miika's preferred level of my three submissions, but it couldn't go too far due to only being a maze. Which is a shame, because I put a solid 3-4 hours into making sure every combination was possible to beat the level with! Not even building sections, just tweaking the "final" level until I had a version that didn't care what you picked. The inspirations here are quite obvious I think- choices, choices and Tool Shed. This level is the reason I ran the mazes only create, which my brother ended up winning with TOTALLY RANDOM MAZE. I could be accused of nepotism with that judgment... but even Josh (runner-up) agreed that it should win If you're reading this Andrew- make more levels! They're good!
43. Fahrenheit Frenzy
About halfway through construction, I decided I wanted to make a time crunch level. A linear fire themed gauntlet named after another Wrath of Cortex level. So I built the bug dodging area, and then it all went downhill when I couldn't resist from building a puzzle. However, I think the puzzle is actually pretty good despite relying on stuff under blocks (I may or may not have been trying to make a statement) even if Tyler busted it with spam cloning somehow. Another of my favorite designs.
44. Celsius Scramble
Another of my favorite designs- Doublemaze already overlaid 2 mazes on top of each other, and Archie's Double Puzzle overlaid 2 sokobans on top of each other. What if we took this further with larger tiles (3x3) and took full advantage of the fact that there was ice? The result was this semi-maze, semi block moving, semi dodging/timing variety experience. The two best moments to me are using the tank to deflect a sliding bug into the teleport, and pushing a block into a teleport and then walking around to push it as it pops back out where it started.
45. Blue Narciss
After designing time trial levels, I felt like making a level with the aesthetic of Eddy's Melody Rain. A single block monster manipulation puzzle followed. Those are kind of a theme in this set, aren't they.

Onwards to the second quarter!
16. Arctic Antics
I've noticed there are a lot of horizontally designed levels compared to the amount of vertically structured levels, which is interesting. Specifically, mazes often seem to have more horizontal paths with vertical connectors compared to vertical hallways with horizontal doors- not counting curvy paths. It's a strange observation to make, and this level was designed in response to that observation. It's "only" a maze with a blue wall/blue lock aesthetic and long vertical ice slides, but some of the blue walls are fake and there are a few extra chips. Just a couple more of those bonuses for the attentive, though of those who've streamed the set (Tyler and Shane), I don't think either of them caught the fake blue walls. Named after the first level of Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex.
17. Retroactive Invocation
Most keyswapping levels have you pick up keys, go somewhere with that key, and pick up more keys behind a lock. More advanced keyswapping levels will use the locks as the only gates to progress in a denser environment, such as Three Color Problem (me), Thinner (Cyberdog I think?), or even too many keys (pieguy). This level tried to do something a little different- recessed walls to "break into" the keyswapping area and get some early keys, and a way to save extra keys. Of course, some of those keys end up used in the second half of the level, which gives the monsters circling an extra purpose. Dual purpose design is always pretty cool, and something I've been trying to include more often.
18/19. Tanks / Tanks, But No Tanks
Ahhh, yes. One of the few levels where I came up with a title before the contents. I don't make tank levels very often, and J.B.'s Genetic Experimentation seemed like an interesting set of walls for a constrained idea. After I set out to make a tank level, I had the brilliantly terrible idea of copying the level, but removing all of the tanks from it to make a pun. From there, I just built a few distinct challenges for Tanks, and added hidden walls and tweaked areas for No Tanks. There should honestly be more level that build off of/toy with adjacent levels- neither of these are too special on their own, but as a combination I absolutely love how they work.
20. Special Little Snowflake
One of the sillier ways I make levels is to just start toying with interesting tessellations and see how they develop. Fossilized Snow and Three Color Problem are two examples of where I've done this in the past, but there are others. Anyway, this level is just a blocksliding challenge with an interesting twist- in MS, a ram is required. This was somewhat controversial, and Shane though it was unfair, so I'll defend this decision a little bit here- this could easily have been relegated to i^e, for instance. I decided to keep this level for three main reasons, but first, watch the Lynx solution if you haven't already.
1. There was no easy way to change the aesthetic/ice placements to make something else interesting, but non-trivial.
2. The solution plays out nearly the same in both rulesets.
3. After the Rainstorm has already canonized the ram.
Now, point 3 on its own is fairly weak as it can create an inequality, and that's something I try to avoid. But that combined with point 2 was enough for me to give into point 1 and keep the level in its current form. Hope that makes sense!
21. Deflection Field
Another level originally conceived as a time trial that was ran as one- though it turned out to be fairly easy to route. In the first version, the exit was where the suction boots are, but Miika had the idea of adding a runback and I liked it for both optimizing and casual play. Though there are 2 balls on every line, the dirt makes for a lot of safe places and ultimately makes this a very cerebral dodging level, which naturally is the kind I prefer. There's just something fun about alternating bursts of preplanning movements and mad dashes/quick reactions to things that you just don't get with a lot of melee levels. Naturally, Seeing Red is one of my best examples of this design style.
22. The Sound of Silence
More than any other level in the set, this is the one that got me designing heavily again. After releasing the update to UC5, I really didn't have any more ideas for levels. Sure, I built the stray level here and there, but it seemed unlikely I'd have a large CC1 release again. After a couple months of downtime, I tried designing some levels meant for time trials, to varying degrees of success. But even that didn't really get anywhere, and roughly 6 months after the UC5 update, I had maybe a dozen levels. For comparison, I've built more than that in the past few weeks! Anyway, CCLP4 construction was ongoing at the time- I think voting had just opened, and I'd spent a lot of time playtesting the submission pool alongside the rest of the staff. And then, Idle Contrast by Eddy came up as a topic of discussion. Was it better or worse than Suspended Animation, which used the concept of trapped monsters springing to life first? Was it too simple? Was Suspended Animation too complex? Why was there no middle ground? Well, I decided to try my hand at designing that concept with the goal of settling the debate. In favor of my own newly design level, of course
I started with the ball rooms where you start- I figured the best way to immediately communicate that this used the Suspended Animation concept was to have a visible exit blocked by trapped monsters, in a room that would allow passage if they started moving. From there the level built off naturally, with various challenges, connections and revisits. By far the hardest part was getting the controller/boss glitch to cooperate. If you look at the bottom right, when the tanks switch the pink balls can start moving, alternating directions every move. This conveniently matches the 5 moves between traps for the paramecia on the left side. The bugs were even trickier, and required some careful tuning of locations and sliding tiles, controller by the fireballs on the bottom left. The ice makes sure they alternate facing up and right when the bugs try to move. Finally, the teeth was the hardest of all- I needed 2 teeth, as only one would have it be released in the opposite direction. Even still, I couldn't find a way to make the teeth release in any direction, so I settled for just up/down.
I'm really happy with how the flow of this level turned out, and even though it uses an existing concept, I think I changed enough and added my own flavor to it to be an original level. Besides, did the monsters ever... stop moving in the original?
23. What Lies Beneath
And now, another level that was used for a time trial! Unlike the other time trial levels in this set, I didn't intend for this to be one. I just built another maze where the walls could be pushed (and had to be in the outside areas) hid 4 chips under blocks that lined up with the pattern (not required, of course) and noticed that it would probably be quite interesting to optimize. Well, it was, and Miika ended up sniping first by 2 seconds
This is probably my favorite maze level that I've ever designed.
24. A Glide Amongst the Clouds
Late in construction, I realized I didn't have a glider level yet! So I made one. The ending underwent a lot of changes, and I went back and forth on if 2 gliders were fair in that toggle room, but ultimately decided that yes, they were. One was too easy, anyway. Other than the ending, it's just some cloning to disrupt and some simple dodging. Enjoyable enough, but not really standout.
25. To the Dungeons!
Recommended viewing:
Alright, you back? Great. I'm sure you can see the obvious inspirations, with traps, layout, unreachable objects, and a leap of faith for that blue key. By far my favorite part of this level is the bottom right- the force floors spice up some otherwise simple ball dodging, and the single block manipulation of 2 gliders is . Also, that's going to become a recurring theme here...
26. A Wish Upon a Distant Blob
Obligatory blob level but more interesting than the obligatory walker level. The lower left can be a little mean, but with the right strategy it doesn't actually take very much luck to complete. The middle section has a minor bust, but I'm okay with its existence. Overall, this level has some really weird moments and I think it succeeds as a blob level. Time limit is 436, the current bold to Blobnet.
27. Uphill Battle
Hi I like hand-built block shuffling puzzles and you can't adapt them with ice or force floors and there's a gotcha/minor shift in style right at the end and I really really like this level. The force floor puzzle in particular, as it's half sardine can, half "how is this even possible" until you use the force floors to your full advantage. Another of my absolute favorites from the set.
28. Demolitions Expert
Yet another time trial level- we're running out of those
This one was paired with Red, Brown and Red and uses gliders as a counterpoint to the fireball cloner. It can get a little out of hand with routing, but ultimately I think it succeeded as a reasonable optimization challenge. Especially because everybody missed something sizable here. I couldn't figure out a way to clone all the gliders at once, and both Miika and Ruben missed the method of using only 5 red locks instead of all of them! I'm still surprised at this, as I specifically designed that in as a shortcut and I thought it was obvious... anyway, building the layouts was quite difficult to keep them rotationally symmetric and nontrivial, but also hard to cook.
29. Congregate
Just a fun little monster dodging collection level with a blob and teeth that can wreak havoc if released early, but screw up fast routes if released late. Have fun J.B.!
30. Dissonance Amid the Storm
Title taken from Touhou 14's Stage 4 title. Random force floors look quite nice, and using them as a path for hidden walls I thought was a really neat idea. Mostly, those paths just break up some precise running from monster in varied arrangements. Oh, and there's a joke at the players' expense here with the teeth.
Another 15 bits of behind the scenes knowledge tomorrow, probably!
Unless I'm too busy with a tournament. Or practicing for said tournament. Or working on CCLP4. Or working on Ape Escape time attacks. Or job hunting. Or relaxing. Or level designing. Or playing FF9. Or working on my backlog. Or coming up with more "or [activity]" phrases to include here...

...which you might have known if you've been paying attention. I had a good clean break of one year from this game, and now I plan on hanging around for a bit again.
It's nice to be back. I see most of you are still here and even some new people have joined the mix. That's great! If our community wants to survive for another decade, we need new blood. Do hang around for a year or two, and maybe a couple of you will stay for longer. And for those that feel they've had a good time but need to move onto other things, do take a minute and say good bye. You'll always be welcome back!
Last year I got a new job and moved to another country. It was good to have a break from CC. Things have settled down a bit now, and it's good to not be away anymore. However, I'm going to try to manage my time and efforts better than I have in the past. There are simply so many interesting things to do in the CCverse that I will need some focus to get anything done without having it overwhelm my life. Mainly this means I won't be optimizing the official sets as much as I'd like but will rather try to chat and create content here. It's very likely you'll still see an occasional score report from me, and in particular working together with other people on problematic levels is something I'll gladly be doing.
I was going to list some of my goals and plans for the coming year, but now I feel like any such list would be lacking as I haven't yet totally caught up with everything in my mind. I did read my previous blog post and was happy to see I did most of the things I was hoping to do last spring. I would like to post on this blog about once a month if I can find the time. I would like to finish CC2; so far I have played half the levels. Of course I also need to sort out my scores and totals on the official sets, even without any improvements. I'll definitely be running some competitions and judging them, even though those always take up a good chunk of my available time. I haven't decided on what I will do with CCLP4 voting, but at least I'll keep an eye open. (To clarify, I don't know if I will vote on all the levels this time.) Finally, I have a ridiculously long back-log of semi-interesting semi-important projects that I'll try to wade through every once in a while.
Thanks for having me back. Let's have a great time again!
-Miika

Lynx and CC2 collision detection are pretty much the same, and they both run at 20 ticks per second (except for electricity in CC2, which is processed 60 times per second, and force floors, which are...weird).
The biggest differences I can think of for collision detection are that, in CC2, items don't give you as much protection, you can die from "block-slapping" monsters, and Chip isn't swapped with the first monster on the monster list when the level is loaded. The latter only serves to create inconsistency, as something like this can illustrate (the bottom chip is obtainable, the top isn't).

Most of what I have to say is pretty much summarized in the above comment. However, there are two points I will agree with you on:
"Am I really not trusted to figure out how to dodge the enemies 2 seconds into Starry Night, or experiment on puzzles?"
I do agree that the hint stating how to dodge those enemies in Starry Night wasn't exactly necessary. We didn't get a hint explaining how to dodge the ones in Torturechamber (which was a lot harder too!), so why was it left in for Starry Night? At level 86, I would have thought the player, new or not, would at least get the idea on how to dodge enemies like that.
"...since certain members of the community will denounce anything that takes them more than one attempt to beat."
It's good to hear I'm not alone on this. After CCLP3 and CCLP1, I feel most members of the community don't have as much patience with the game anymore. Expecting to solve every level on the first try doesn't make the game fun, it makes it redundant. CCLP3's puzzles were outstanding in their own way, that required a restart or three to finally get the solve. Though I feel the last 5 or so levels of CCLP3 pushed this too far, especially with Old Frog and Suspended Animation, which wasn't the best ending in my opinion. CCLP1... well it was obvious from the start there would be little to no extremely hard levels there. CCLP1 in some aspects is boring and too easy. But then again, I am not new to the world of CC.
About CCLP4... it won't wait till the next decade - late 2017/early 2018 would be an ideal time to expect it. We hope to deliver levels that are harder and require more thought to solve, but also remain fun. The highest difficulty to expect it to have would be around the same as the mid 120s/early 130s from CCLP3. But not all levels will meet this, there will still be some simpler levels. Just to give you an idea.

CCLXP2. I recently finished playing through this set and to say the least, it was a different experience than back when I let's played the MS version. Not by much, but different enough to call it out.
The CCLXP2 project dates back to as early as late 2011. As we all know, CCLP2 was not crafted with the lynx ruleset in mind, due to the fact people were far more aware of the MS port instead of the original version. Over the years and especially after CCLP3's release, Lynx compatibly became more common of a ruleset, with many more designers crafting levels with both MS and Lynx rulesets in mind, instead of just the former. Because of this, various community members, including myself, took it upon themselves to make CCLP2, Lynx-compatible. For players who prefer the Lynx ruleset over the other to enjoy the first offical level pack (at the time at least). I was once part of this project in its early days, since I am a big fan of CCLP2. But as time went on and going through many hiatus periods, eventually I disbanded from it due to other reasons.
Despite the fact it has been released for quite some time now, I finally found myself to take the time to play through it. I was very tempted to LP this, to go along with my old out-of-date MS run back in 2011 but I decided against it.
As far as feedback goes, I will leave some for any level I found particularly interesting or more of a challenge. This includes the fixed levels and even some where the gameplay was slightly different but was still Lynx-compatible from the start.
Warning, spoilers. (I mean if you never played the original CCLP2 at least?)
--Feedback--
14. The Parallel Port
This was the first level in CCLP2 to use invalid tiles. Originally, every collectable item was under a fake blue wall and the path to the exit included an ice corner, which can't be passed through in Lynx. The fix to this was shifting all items to the upper layer and over some to require close to the same amount of time to obtain as it would in MS. While the level itself wasn't really interesting even in the original, I found it enjoyable to finally play it in Lynx.
15. Debug File
I always choke myself up whenever I go back to watch Rock's run of this level and dying hilariously. This level went under very little fixes actually. Aside from the monsters not being on top of blocks, the way to collect chips was interesting. This was possibly the best (and only) fix for this and it was much appreciated. Got the bold on my first try too, without trying!
17. Double Trouble
The fix to this was simply making it possible to move at the start. Originally, the glider would kill you instantly in Lynx. Not that this mattered because the level was unplayable anyway due to the thin walls being under some fake blue walls and normal walls under chips. I found it a little amusing that the pop-up walls in the fixed version aren't necessary.
19. A Sample of Things to Come
I never was a big fan of this level but the fix to it was pretty simple. I like the new mechanism that replaced the original buried pop-up walls under the red locks at the start.
20. Ranger Denmark
This level was always silly to me, but this version is very obviously different. Such that the fire was replaced by water and most the monsters were swapped with their counterparts. Still was simple as ever to solve though.
21. Block Away!
I hated the original version but this one did it some justice, though not that much. I remember looking at this level upon this project's early days, figuring out what could be done if the wrong red buttons were pressed. That fix was clever, I never thought of it. The fact the blue keys next to the tanks were still there when viewing in the editor was nice to see, though me personally I would have swapped through some keys as to not add some like the lower right did.
Finally, the way to exit. Great change. I disliked the original with traps under locks. Even though I didn't trapped in this run, had I done so I wouldn't have minded as much.
22. How Goes?
Pretty good. (see what I did there?)
I remember this change being brought up and it is indeed a great one. Does not affect MS's solution at all, which was part of the goal whenever possible.
26. Work Fast
Surprisingly, I had a hard time at this one. I was so used to the way monsters moved in MS that it's completely different in Lynx. The glider section below was also a challenge to go through since splash delay is a thing. Overall, I enjoyed it but I probably won't replay it ever.
28. Madness I (LX)
So this was the first level that had to undergo a big change. While it's appearance is quite similar compared to viewing the original, the gameplay is slightly different. Blocks moving against each other while on traps is actually a pretty clever concept and I liked it. I did get killed by the first attempt though, since I didn't pay attention to the display message before.
31. Well of Wishes
While this level was already compatible with Lynx to begin with, I felt the gameplay was different enough to review it - notably, the glider part at the start.
For the longest time, I kept thinking it was possible to go through it the same way in MS but I don't believe it is. Until I realized the flippers can be used to collect those chips. Even though it's possible to do that in MS as well, I never noticed that and I really liked that it was used here.
47. Tele-Rooms
I really found it fun that I was able to obtain all the first chips in the east fireball room without stopping. A lot of levels in this ruleset do this and I found it nice.
The only other difference I found cool was the blobs on ice. The timing to get past them a few times was a good challenge.
48. And Then There Were... Four?
Of course those fire boots are still in the third column.
I liked this fix, I remember it being brought up and it was well-received. Though, I don't think all the other red buttons needed to be there.
59. Lot of Danger
The beginning was much more difficult, since you have no control over the random force floors. I honestly really dislked the paramecium part after this. I felt it could have had more wiggle room and less of a chance of dying by it. Other than that, this level was pretty good.
68. Madness II (LX)
I just realized both Madness levels changed in this set.
Anyway, the only changes were the hidden items and the force floors underwater right at the beginning. Mostly everything else is the same. It was a good level to play again.
70. Killer Spiral
One of the few levels that I actually suggested the fix for (The other being Frost Swirl)! And a different style gameplay, since I couldn't rely on boosting like I could in the original.
82. The Block Stops Here (LX)
The bomb section at the bottom was a well done fix. It was appreciated that I could actually kill off some of the gliders, if I really needed to.
85. Follow the Glacier Brick Road
It was sad to see the original level's concept go but there was no way to replicate it for Lynx. So arguably this one was a lot, lot easier to solve.
87. The Walker Machine (LX)
An actual level that requires you to erase blue keys? This may be my favorite level in this Lynx version. It was just a ton of fun to play and has so much replay value. I loved it, well done to whoever's idea this was!
92. Abandoned Mines
The blob section was a lot more challenging here, since blobs act weird in Lynx. The force floors at the end gave me a headache. That's mostly the animations fault but still it was a pain collecting the chips there. Was still fun to play again regardless.
93. Exit Chip
Okay. This level wasn't nearly as evil as the original. I actually kind of liked it? That's kind of hard to say though!
Thankfully I didn't die by any ball on that ice slide, though I did almost get killed by the block containing suction boots in the NE.
94. Checkerboard II (LX)
A good fix to the level but I didn't enjoy playing it. I found it easier to mess up guiding blocks in this version. I might have been impatient though.
96. Glider and Fire
I remember there being debate on whether this level should stay or be replaced by a mirrored version that I made back when this project was first starting out. I'm honestly a little disappointed the mirrored version didn't get used here, it would have been much easier in my opinion.
Anyway I had to watch Miika's lynx solution to this level to solve this. I especially hated the ending that requires nearly perfect timing to exit or you'd get killed by a glider, which is completely out of your control. I wish some were removed at least but oh well.
In general I can't say I liked it, but it was definitely a challenging level.
99. One-Block Sokoban
Lol I accidentally erased the blue key on the first attempt.
Backtracking to get the green key before pushing the block was not fun. It couldn't be helped though. What could have been helped though was the teleport/splash delay cook at the very very end. That wasn't very nice, Lynx.
105. Yet Another Puzzle (LX)
Still remained just as fun as the original, despite the change. It was a little harder to outrace the glider before getting stuck.
107. Joyride I
I recommended a time limit increment for this level but unfortunately it didn't receive one. So the bold time is 2, which I find funny.
108. Tricks
Block slapping made this level a lot easier.
112. After the Rainstorm (LX)
Even though its not required here, I love the fact the force floor remains in that once called "Ram" section. Nice touch.
113. Oorto Geld II
This is the true definition of a lame sequel. And the walkers didn't do it any better. Did not enjoy this one.
119. Teeth
I never did play the version that required odd step but this was a good level. I appreciate the teeth in NE no longer releases out of it's trap.
120. Frost Rings (LX)
Even though it's concept couldn't be retained, it was still enjoyable. Nothing beats the original though
123. BlockSlide
No changes but because slide delay does not exist in Lynx, this level played sooooo much smoother. Loved it.
130. Frozen Birdbath (LX)
I raged on this level in my MS run. I despised the original so much, it's my top least favorite CC level. BUT.
This version did it so much justice. I loved it. Considering to replace my #1 least favorite level now.
131. Time Bomb (LX)
I'm surprised this was mirrored and Glider and Fire wasn't. But it makes sense with this level, since the original had fire all over the place.
The level was great. I don't know if it's the same gameplay just mirrored but it seemed harder to me. Great fix (or replacement I guess?).
132. Captured (LX)
This one wasn't as annoying as the original. Quicker to solve as well!
136. Switch Hit
I'm surprised the AVI for this level claims this to be unsolvable in Lynx. It was definitely more interesting here though, it had me stomped on how to exit since the way to in MS couldn't be done.
139. Frostbite (LX)
I found this to be a little more timing based. Enjoyable to play though was never much of a fan of the original.
140. Keep Trying
Moving with random force floors everywhere was more difficult than it should have been. But still fun to play!
143. Trapped
The fact there still resides a bust here makes this level better. Didn't catch it until I completed it the first time, so I went back and executed that bust.
145. Gauntlet
I don't know if it's possible to collect all 15 chips in the teeth corridor, but I didn't chance it. Thankfully the 2 at the end were useful for something! The walker clone machines also acted out with me and caused me to die several times.
146. Run-a-Muck
Hated the original. Hated this version even more. I especially hated that a fireball in the west room goes in the ball/chip room which only made it unnecessarily harder. Sorry.
147. Cloner's Maze
Just because gliders don't die in fire here, I went all out with the cloner and spammed it for a good 30 in-game seconds. Don't do that, it ain't a good idea.
Anyway I had to watch chipster1059's video of solving this in Lynx because I was at a complete loss on some parts. While I'm pretty sure it's possible otherwise, I relied on collisions to collect the yellow key and one of the chips. I hated one collision but loved the other. Thanks chipster for the video assistance!
148. Neptune
Liked the fact the traps made getting blocks in those spots for gliders to destroy the bombs much easier. I didn't enjoy this level that much unfortunately.
--Final Review--
Overall, playing this was very interesting and most, if not all, the fixes were excellent. Thank you to those who worked hard on completing this project and I apologize for disbanding in the middle of it. You did CCLP2 some justice with this. I highly recommend playing this, even if you weren't a fan of the original.
Rating: 8/10

So I've got this problem called Life (capital L) which continually manages to get in the way of my CC2 time. Wife, daughter, work, home improvement, photography, reading, artwork, etc. I keep meaning to contribute to the community but lately I'm realizing that it will never happen if I don't figure something out. So, this week I've been trying something new.
Every day, no matter how busy, I'm trying to spend 10 minutes playing through someone else's levels and 10 minutes designing my own. (I'm using the extremely useful app Habitica lately, and these are marked as daily tasks. Since I've come to terms with the fact that I'm unlikely to ever have the discipline to LP anything, I think the next best thing is to share short blog reviews every time I beat a level. It's something at least!
Today's level is (drumroll)...
GLASSACRE by Josh Lee, from Flareon1 v1.7.1.
Chips: 72, Time: 750
(SPOILERS, obviously)
Concept (3/5): It's a pretty basic idea, a 32x32 maze where the walls are all ice blocks sandwiched between thin walls. There are numerous short ice slides as well, many of which have bombs that need to be cleared. Gameplay consists of pushing blocks into bombs to collect chips, and is about as fundamental as it gets. The yellow and red keys open up rooms to a few more chips but they are trivial. And then there's the glass eye right at the beginning which, unless I'm missing something, does nothing at all, except to reveal that there are force floors under all the ice blocks.
Puzzle Difficulty (2/5): It's a casual play experience. The sokobans are easy but not trivial; my first time through I cooked the level by using a block on the wrong bomb, but overall it's pretty obvious which blocks go where. I particularly like the upper and lower rows of 6 bombs each, and for thematic continuity I could wish to see the yellow key placed at the end of the upper row to match the red key at the bottom.
Action Difficulty (1/5): There's plenty of time and no reason to rush. That's not to say I didn't totally and stupidly run into a bomb on my 2nd attempt.
Fun (4/5): I really enjoyed the level. It was fun and methodical without requiring a lot of focus. I liked the look of the ice blocks/thin walls. The ice slides through and between rooms really add interest to the maze. And I've always liked pushing blocks into bombs. I was a little disappointed by the secret eye. When I saw all the force floors under the blocks I was expecting some sort of grand finale or bonus area, especially with the missing thin wall at (18, 6). I also felt like the keys didn't add much to the level. But overall, I enjoyed it. Thanks to Josh for the experience.
Finally, here is a zero-commentary, completely unoptimized
of my solution.
Please let me know any comments, recommendations, or thoughts on how to make these short level reviews useful and informative!

Thanks again for everyone who entered this competition, the average level of quality here was incredibly high and ranking these came down to the slimmest of margins. Literally any of the levels in the top half could easily have been the winner, and very minor changes to levels could also have resulted in several place changes. Onwards to the results!
12th place:
11th place:
10th place:
9th place:
8th place:
7th place:
6th place:
5th place:
4th place:
3rd place:
2nd place:
1st place:
Thanks again to everyone who entered, I know I'm looking forward to seeing what's on offer for Tyler's Create!
Final results:

Today's levelset review is of the custom CC2 levelset "Explorer's Delight 1.2" by H2O.
The set contains 6 levels. As the name suggests, the levelset features very large, sprawling levels where exploration is as much a part of the gameplay as the puzzle solving.
The full video of my playthrough can be found at the following link:
Summary:
Overall, I have mixed feelings about this levelset.
1) I absolutely love the idea of focusing on exploration. When I think about what it was like as a kid to play the MS version, I remember more than anything the excitement of discovering new rooms and exploring new passageways. That's one area where I think the official CC2 levelset could have used a lot of improvement, with its focus on small puzzles (often 20x20 or smaller). This levelset does a good job in general of capturing that feel.
2) The puzzle design is top quality. The author consistently puts together puzzles that are interesting, fun, and challenging.
3) The epic reach of the levelset is in some ways its own undoing. Levels 3, 5, and 6 all stand out in my memory as being incredibly frustrating. The problem (of course) is that whenever a level is very long, any late mistake results in the player having to replay the entire level. The challenge for the designer is to find a way to mitigate that. Difficulty by itself is okay, and campaign-length levels by themselves are okay, but when you factor both together you run the risk of player frustration. In my case it took me over 4 hours to beat 6 levels, with the majority of that time spent on the last 2. Granted, I'm not the best CC player, and my dumb mistakes may have contributed to that, but the fact is if this hadn't been a Let's Play, I would have given up. Now, I really do appreciate the attempt to create an exploration-themed set, and I did enjoy my playthrough, although I felt it involved a lot of unnecessary frustration. I personally really liked the first two levels. They both did a great job with the exploration element, and they each had ONE central puzzle. My feeling is that this levelset could be a great success if each level centers around 1, 2, or maybe 3 puzzles at maximum.
So, to the author, thank you for uploading! I hope you continue exploring (pun intended) this concept. My personal feel is that large levels should be mostly casual play experiences, and therefore I'd like to see the difficulty dialed down a notch or two.
Individual Reviews:
01 ABANDONED MINESHAFT
As described, a great intro to the set, love the deco walls/gravel combo. The 'mineshaft' feel was evident with all the broken railroad sections. I loved all the inaccessible areas with extra chips and all the random monsters. The central puzzle with the three blocks was interesting, I didn't know the first time I played it that you could push a dirt block with a directional block. But I liked how there was really nothing else to try. The maze at upper left added a lot to the feel as well.
02 FIERY CAVES
A beautiful exploration level with a straightforward concept. My favorite exploration experience of the set. Again, some really cool areas along the sides of the map that you can't quite reach, but they look so cool!
03 SUBTERRANEAN ADVENTURE
The first level where the problems inherent with large levels begin to show up. All of the individual puzzles are lovely. I particularly love the opening with the ghost and the great hint. Together, though, the combination just begins to cross the line of frustration. I do like how each puzzle is fully visible before committing, but still, I think the average player will have trouble thinking ahead through the recessed wall and railroad switch portions, and it's a lot of level to replay when you cook it.
04 POWDER MONKEY
If FIERY CAVES was my favorite exploration experience, then this is my favorite puzzle experience of the set. All three block puzzles were ingenious and very fun to solve. The difficulty overall was about medium, which is just perfect in my book. I may have busted the west room, since I never opened the red door in the corner. My only critique is that this didn't feel much like an exploration level, and therefore felt out of place in this set. Excellent level however.
05 SCATTERED
I think I may have made my peace with this level, despite the frustration exhibited on the Let's Play.
One issue that's debatable is:
My personal feel is that certain gameplay mechanics are 'bonus' behavior and shouldn't be relied on to solve a level unless help is given either in the form of a hint or else careful level design. Obviously these are up for discussion, but things like monster order, ultra-precise monster timing, block-slapping, or covering up wires are examples of things that are somewhat 'unfair' in my opinion and should be used with caution.
This level absolutely tested the limits of my patience, but in retrospect I do think it was kind of cool. It would make a good level towards the end of a difficulty curve, especially if the set containing it already has examples of the previously mentioned gameplay mechanic. The beginning was delightful. The 'exploration' aspect significantly added to the difficulty, as the inaccessible areas with extra keys made it more confusing. But once explored, it was absolutely a memorable puzzle, with quite a lot of 'how is this even possible' moments and a great, if slightly unfair 'crux'.
06 SMALL OBSTACLES
This level, coming after SCATTERED, gave me the most grief of all. Like SUBTERRANEAN ADVENTURE, it's definitely got the exploration theme going for it. And like that level, it has a collection of individually wonderful puzzles which together are just... frustrating. It's a great feeling to solve another section, but when you cook it instead and have to replay everything, it gets old really fast.
Additionally, a couple extra factors made this not so fun to play:
Also, the later puzzles are HARD. I'm not a particularly good CC player, but I'm pretty sure almost anyone who plays this will mess up the yellow teleport section multiple times and have to replay pretty much the entire level on each go. This adds a lot to the frustration, and makes it more likely the player will make stupid mistakes earlier in the level (a few of which you don't realize until much later). Finally, the last puzzle on bottom left relies on
a gameplay mechanic that most people probably haven't tested. In a short level this wouldn't be a deal-breaker, but coming at the end of what was for me a 2+ hour ordeal, it felt pretty unfair to try out something new that might require yet another replay.
So, I didn't like this level at all, despite it consisting of some great puzzles. I'd recommend splitting it up into either 2 hard puzzles or, even better, 3 medium puzzles.

To second what Josh said, the community is still active. Not only does a lot of discussion take place on Skype, but most people are busy with CCLP4 voting and so everything else to do with the game is on the backburner right now (and thus there's nothing really to post about).
On another note: if you're bored with both the CC Zone awards leaderboard and custom levels, you could always try your hand at the actual CC leaderboards for a new experience that you might enjoy (That also goes for you, whoever else ends up reading this comment. Yes, you! There's a reason people have been improving their CC scores for over 20 years: it's fun!)

So you're gonna leave before CCLP4 is out? That's a shame. I'm also extending JoshL6 to 149 levels that I hope to have done by the end of the year so you'll also miss out on that as well as some other CC2 updates maybe, if they ever happen.
CCZone has died down quite a bit yes but that's not really a good enough reason to just leave, unless it's temporary. No matter how dead this site is or how busy I will ever be, I will always come on every day just because I appreciate the game and love the community and vice versa.
Maybe if you got Skype and were added to the CCBBC Skype group you'll realize the community isn't as dead as you think.

I guess it did take a year but now CCLP4 is sort of happening yay.
Also I'm getting much more into cc2. The tutorial challenge was awesome!
My personal life has gotten to be quite the complicated thing (more than usual...) but I am starting to free up a little time here and there. As the year goes on I should be around a little more often.
Anything in CC2 you wish was there but isn't? Someday we may have a tileworld version of CC2...might be able to enhance it a bit. Or maybe Chuck will take suggestions (which will probably end up in Chuck's Challenge).
Anyway -- when do we vote????

A while ago, I did a review of the Beta version of CCLXP2, the Lynx version of CCLP2 (you can find it here: http://cczone.invisionzone.com/index.php?/blog/16/entry-61-cclxp2-beta-review/). Since then, Miika released the final version of CCLXP2: http://cczone.invisionzone.com/index.php?/files/file/470-cclxp2dat/
The first thing I noticed is that the CCX file seems identical to that of the Beta version. There is no extended storyline, nothing from that Create Competition a few months ago. But the storyline is merely an enhancement to the set, it's the levels that really matter, so let's talk about these instead.
Miika provided a complete changelog for the set. Very few changes were made, so most of the solutions for the Beta are still valid. Also, most of the things I said in the review for the Beta are still true. I shall therefore only review the modified levels.
Madness I LX: Essentially, a few thin walls were added near the trap buttons to prevent a bust. I have no idea what the bust is, but either way, it is only a minor change.
Yike-O-Matic *: The pointless block and water tiles I reported in the Beta have been removed. Therefore, optimizers maysave a few fractions of a second due to the lack of a spash delay.
Lot of Danger *: The first room is still as painful as ever. The change is simply adding a water tile. For the "visual effect". Changes. Absolutely. Nothing.
Just Enough *: A toggle wall was changed into a thin wall. This prevents a bust. My solution was not affected.
Checkerboard II LX: First thing, there is a mistake in the changelog: this is level 94, not 95. The change involves adding a lot of gravel, probably to prevent Chip from using the fireballs to blow up the bombs, and even more gravel for symmetry. It appers this bust also works in MS, so I really don't understand: I thought the goal was to make the levels as close to the originals as possible, including reproducing their busts.
Yet Another Puzzle LX: This level is very different. Even more bombs were added, making the level longer, just like the original. This is the best change in the final version.
After the Rainstorm LX: A few force floors were modified to fix a bust. This is only a minor change, although my solution was rendered invalid.
Teeth: It now works in even-step. Ths is a very welcome change. I don't really understand the mechanism, but it looks great in the editor.
And finally, Cloner's Maze *. While it remains unchanged in the final version, I did manage to solve it since I wrote the Beta review. It is a very good level. I would like to thank Jeanne Hoffman for the SSViewer solution, which was extremely helpful in solving the level. If anyone knows how it was made, please tell me.
Overall, I rate CCLXP2 :star: :star: and a half. Great set and great adaptation. Thanks to Miika Toukola, Rock Généreux, Josh Lee, Dave Varberg and Michael Warner for their work on this project!
If you are interested in watching my LP of CCLXP2, you may find it here:
Most of the videos are for the Beta, but the last few are for the final version.